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bqstqnbruin · 4 months ago

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Tattoos of You

Look, I know this gif is ancient but I love this one don't judge me.

ANYWAY here I am with my entry for @wyattjohnston's summer 2024 fic exchange! I had the pleasure of writing for @senditcolton so I hope you enjoy this because I have literally been thinking about this fic so much for the last like three months (yes I have been working on this idea for too long)

These following links are some of the tik toks that I used for inspo for this fic: X X X X X

Special shoutout to @nicohischier for reading this the entire time I was writing it, love you (I swear you'll get a happy fic at some point)

Warnings: Swearing, drinking, aNGST (Nicole you asked for it)

WC: 11k

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an open book with a sunset coming out of it

The sun was shining, children were running around and laughing, people were splashing around in the water.

Colette was under an umbrella, trying to stay in its shade as much as possible, with a hat on her head and her sunglasses on.

“Can you please enjoy yourself?” Becca asks.

“This is as close to enjoying myself as you’re going to get,” Colette mumbles, not looking up from the book that she was reading. It’s not that she hated the beach, it’s that she hated the sun, the sand, the heat, the noise, the crowds of people.

Maybe she did hate the beach.

“Do you want to go back up to the house?” The house was not much better: the AC barely worked when they got in last night, and Colette spent most of the night not sleeping because of how hot the room was. She was also pretty sure that there was a raccoon somewhere in the walls of the house, since the scratching she could swear was coming from behind her head when she was in her bed only happened at night, and magically stopped once the sun came up.

“Do you want to go back to the house?” Colette asks.

“Not at all.”

“Well, I’m not going to walk the two miles back alone, am I?”

Becca rolls her eyes, shielding them from the sun despite the huge sunglasses on her face. She looks out to the water and lets out a long sigh. “Everyone else is in the water having fun, why don’t we join them?”

Colette makes a face as she looks out at the rest of her friend group. They were playing some horrible version of chicken, given the fact that she was sure she and Becca were the only ones sober at this point. “Then when you get out of the water, the sand sticks to you because you’re all wet and it’s impossible to get off.”

“You’re, like, the only person I know who hates the beach this much.”

“I wanted to go to a cabin near the lake we used to go to when we were younger, and you all wanted to ‘try something new,’” Colette points out. “I told you I didn’t like the beach, but you guys said you wouldn’t go away without me.”

Becca rolls her eyes again, “That’s because we like you, Lettie. You’re the responsible one in the group.”

Becca gets up without another word, going to join the rest of their friends in the water. “Great,” Colette mumbles, going back to her book.

She loses track of time, her friends never even coming back to talk to her while she finishes one book and quickly moves on to the next. The people around her come and go, the beach slowly emptying out as people leave for dinner. She wasn’t sure how long her friends would last without food, given the amount of alcohol they had consumed and how little they had come back to their spots in the sand to even grab the snacks they ran around packing that morning.

“Watch out!” she hears coming from her left, a ball hitting the book out of her hands and into the sand a few feet away before she even has the chance to react.

“You bastards,” she shrieks as two guys come running over to get the ball. “That’s a library book.”

“Your book is fine,” one of them says, holding up the book with two fingers as if it had a disease or something else rancid oozing out of it.

“Are you ok?” the other one asks, Colette holding up her hand to shield her eyes so she could at least see the guys she was scowling at with the sun behind them.

Despite her anger at them for nearly probably injuring her, they were, unfortunately for her, attractive. Not that made her less angry, but if Becca were there next to her, she would somehow manage to force Colette to acknowledge it to their faces.

“I’m fine, but my book is not,” she says, ripping the thing out of the darker haired boy. “You ripped one of the pages when you picked it up.”

The one with lighter hair looked behind his friend, scoffed and thrust the ball into his friend's chest to pick up the now missing page. “You’re giving her money to pay for a replacement book,” he says, handing Colette the page.

“Fine, I’ll give her the ten dollars.”

“This book cost twenty five,” she tells him, showing him the price from the back of the book.

“Books are twenty five dollars?” he scoffs. “For what?”

“If you could read above a fourth grade reading level, maybe you would know,” Colette mutters, earning a laugh from the lighter haired boy.

“I’m not paying that much for a book.”

“You’re the one who kicked the ball that ruined her book. You’re the one who’s going to pay for her to replace it so she doesn’t have to. You get, like, a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a week for your paycheck, you can handle twenty five dollars, you jackass.”

Colette nearly chokes when she hears the number he casually spit out, the two sending themselves into a bickering match over the money. She gets out her phone, wincing as she stands up for the first time in hours to hand it to the dark haired boy. “Send the money here.”

He starts mumbling something under his breath, Colette rolling her eyes as he does as instructed. One of the guys from their group calls for them, him running back to them with the ball.

“Sorry about Mat,” his friend says, standing over Colette as she sits back down.

“He seems like a delight,” she deadpans, trying to hide the combination of disgust and excitement as he sits down with her, laughing at her words.

“He’s an asshole,” he tells her, squinting as he looks out at the water. Colette couldn’t help but study him, the green of his eyes, the sharp angle of his jawline, his somehow perfectly styled hair, all combining to something she didn’t understand her need to look at. “And thankfully, my opposite.”

“People don’t talk like that,” Colette blurts out before thinking.

“Excuse me?”

“‘And thankfully, my opposite,’” she imitates him, lowering her voice and earning another laugh from him. “That’s something people say in rom coms.”

“You’re awfully judgemental for someone who doesn’t have to pay for a damaged book.”

Colette laughs, a smile forming on his face that, for some reason, she didn’t want to stop seeing. “It’s part of my charm. I’m Colette, by the way.”

“Anthony.”

Colette loses track of time again, not because of her now ruined book. Becca eventually comes back, as do the rest of the friends, letting her know that they were running to grab food before coming back to watch the sunset. Anthony’s friends had seemingly all but forgotten about him, at one point leaving without him realizing it, only to come back with Colette’s friends with food for both of them.

“You guys came all the way to Canada when you live in Pittsburgh?” Mat asks.

“We go somewhere every year together, Lettie picked Vancouver for her turn,” Eddy says.

“I did not pick the beach, though,” she says, only loud enough for Anthony to hear.

“Glad you did,” he replies, again, only loud enough for her to hear. He smiles at her, his hand inching towards hers in the sand as the sun sets over the water.

a tent on the ground with a pine tree next to it, the moon and shooting star over both

“Those guys from the beach said they wanted to go camping with us this weekend,” Eddy says during their group facetime.

Becca immediately started making plans of who was driving with who, Addison talking about the tents and sleeping bags she could borrow from her dad and brothers from their scouting days, Devyn talking about the food they would be able to bring, Franco talking about the beer.

“Hold on, guys,” Colette interrupted, doubting that any of her friends was actually listening to the others. “Since when do we camp?”

“Since hot guys ask us to,” Eddy says.

“You liked those guys?” Colette asks, the rest of her friends laughing at her.

“Oh, come on, Lettie,” Addison teases her. “You ignored us for the entire three days we were there because you were talking to Anthony.”

Colette rolls her eyes, thankful that her friends couldn’t see the rapid succession of texts from Anthony appearing on her screen at that moment. She didn’t want to tell them that they were right that she liked talking with him that weekend two months ago, so much so that she had been texting him almost as often as she was texting the group chat. She didn’t want to admit that she thought she was starting to fall for a guy she had only interacted with in person once, because who the hell did that?

But, this was an excuse to see him again, without her friends nagging her about her crush, that may or may not exist, in a way that wouldn’t be a date.

“I’m not driving.”

“Does that mean you’re coming?” Eddy asks, all of her friends faces’ way too close to their cameras for her to do anything other than groan.

“Unfortunately.”

By the time they got to the camping site, the guys already had enough tents set up for a small army. Eddy stops the car, Devyn and Franco getting out and immediately starting to unpack the trunk full of their stuff.

“Damn,” Eddy drools, Colette laughing. “I never knew setting up tents was hot.”

“It’s not.”

Eddy fans himself, taking in a deep breath. “It is once you realize that that active bakery over there is attached to your boyfriend.”

Colette cringes, trying not to let Eddy see her looking at Tito with his back towards them, bent over at his waist, his ass right there. “Not my boyfriend.”

“Not yet, babe,” Eddy corrects her. “That could change tonight.”

“And how, praytell, do you see that happening?”

“You’ll share a tent with him, you’ll share all your secrets, fall madly in love, get married with me as the bridesman of honor, of course, have tons of babies, and die in each others arms like that one couple on the Titanic.”

“You could eat and shit out a bunch of Scrabble tiles and whatever they spelled out would still make more sense than whatever just came out of your mouth,” she says, getting out of the car just as Becca and Addison pull up behind them.

Eddy laughs, locking the car doors. “Just because I don’t make sense to you doesn’t mean I’m not right. I’ve never seen two people who align so well before you and Tito. You are so meant to be.”

Colette laughs. “I’ll remember that next time you’re fawning over Devyn and Franco’s relationship,” she tells him, gesturing over to their two friends who had already claimed a tent to share together.

Eddy had a sly smile forming on his face, one that Colette knew was going to lead to something she hated. “Hey, Anthony,” he calls.

Anthony perks up once he sees who calls his name, Colette telling herself that it was simply because he heard his name and he had ‘golden retriever vibes’ in general, not because he saw her, despite the fact that he was looking at her the entire time he came over. “What’s up, Ed?”

Eddy visibly swoons at the sound of Anthony calling him a nickname, trying to collect his composure before Anthony actually notices or Colette calls him out for it. “Lettie here said that she wanted to share a tent with someone since she’s never been camping before.”

“What?”

“Ok?”

“Well, I snore like a jet ski, so I would never want to subject our girl to that,” Eddy continues, throwing his arm around Colette and pulling her close to him, throwing her off balance, “So we were wondering if you wanted to share with her?”

“Oh!” Anthony says, his face turning red. Colette tries to discreetly pinch Eddy’s side as payback, her heart racing as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, I was going to ask you that anyway, but I guess you beat me to it.”

Eddy walks away without another word, leaving an angry Colette and an embarrassed Anthony behind in his wake. “He’s lying, I’m fine on my own if you don’t-”

“You don’t-” he cuts her off, looking down at the ground, “You don’t want to share a tent?”

“No, I mean,” she starts, trying to find the right words. How do you tell someone you want to be near them without it sounding weird? “If you want to, I wouldn't say no to sharing.”

“Oh, I want to,” he says quickly, a small laugh escaping his lips that matched Colettes. “I want to.”

Colette could feel her face getting hot as she smiled at him. “Let’s go set up our tent?”

Their friends wander off again, just like the day they met at the beach, as the day wore on, leaving Anthony and Colette to finish setting up where they were going to start their fire for the night.

“Hold on,” Colette says, trying not to laugh so hard that she couldn’t get the words out, “She threw what?”

“A dildo.”

“So that photo you sent me of your black eye from last season?”

Anthony’s face was bright red, biting his lip and nodding, “Yeah. yeah, it wasn’t from practice. It was from Tamsin throwing a dildo at me when she thought I was breaking into our apartment.”

Colette cackled, the ugliest sounding laugh she had ever heard bubbling up from her stomach. “I’m so sorry.”

“Like you’ve never had any embarrassing encounters with an ex.”

“The worst I’ve had is a guy named Mason sprinkled packets of those instant mashed potatoes around the lawn outside my apartment complex after a bad break up when we were in college.”

“How’d you know it was him?”

“He texted me right before it rained asking if I liked mashed potatoes, and then I never heard from him again.”

Anthony laughs, the voice in Colette's head telling her that she wanted to hear that sound as much as she could. They keep talking about nothing as the sun sets, starting the fire before it gets too dark out.

“So,” Anthony says, sitting down on one of the chairs, the shadows from the flames illuminating every Colette had been mesmerized by the first time they met. “We’ve got Dildo Throwing Tamsin and Mashed Potato Mason as our exes.”

“I think they’d like each other,” she laughs, plopping down on a chair next to him. Colette looks up to the sky. The stars streaked the sky like nothing she had ever seen before. She knew there were millions of stars up there, but she never thought she would see them. “God, you never get to see the stars with all the city lights. It’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” she hears Anthony say, his face red yet again when she turns her attention to him and smiles. Before she can say anything, he starts, “Do you think we can see each other?”

“Do you think I’m imaginary or something?”

“No, I mean,” he starts, the sounds of their friends coming back to start eating making him jump. He pulls his chair so close to Colette’s they practically overlap as he lowers his voice. “Can we go out when we’re back in the city? Just the two of us?”

Colette felt her face getting hot again, charmed by the nerves he showed around her. “Yes.”

a mirror with an outline of a head in it, no face

“What are you doing right now?”

“I’m getting ready for work.”

“Do you want to hang out?”

“Did you not hear me?”

Colette hears Anthony laugh on the other end of the phone. “I heard you, but I still want to hang out. I miss you.”

Colette cringed as she felt her heart skip a beat. She hated that she missed him too, and she wanted to see him, but, “I have to leave in the next two minutes if I want to be on time for my meeting, I can’t. What about tonight?”

“We have a home game at seven tonight. Tomorrow morning?”

“I’m watching my cousin and taking him to his soccer game for my aunt tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“You’re not coming to watch pee wee soccer.”

“What time are you leaving to pick him up?”

“You’re really bad at listening,” Colette says, grabbing the last of her stuff as she heads out the door.

“What time?” he repeats, clearly not going to stop until she gives him an answer as she rushes out the door.

“I don’t remember. Can I let you know after work tonight?”

“Sure. Talk later?” he asks, alarm bells going off in Colette’s head about something she was sure he was scheming.

He hangs up before he can say anything, leaving Colette to stew as to what he was going to do. Anthony wasn’t going to show up at her apartment when she was supposed to leave to get her cousin, was he?

“Why do you look like that?” Addison asks once she sees Colette at work.

Colette snaps out of the trance she didn’t realize she was in, looking away from her computer for the first time in a while. “I don’t know, genetics?” she asks, a slightly offended tone in her voice.

“No, I mean,” she says, sitting down on Colette’s desk. “You look concerned.”

Colette shakes her head. “I was just working,” she says, leaning back in her chair and rubbing her eyes. She lets out a sigh. “Anthony was really adamant about hanging out.”

“Oh, no,” she says, fake concern dripping through her voice as Colette rolls her eyes. “The guy you’re dating wants to see you.”

“He was kind of weird about it, though. He wanted to come over this morning, and I think he wants to hang out tomorrow.”

“Well, that’s not weird.”

“I’m watching Grayson tomorrow.”

“And?”

“And he knows that.”

“So?”

Colette rolls her eyes again out of frustration for herself. Why couldn’t she explain how she felt to her friend? “So we just saw each other, like, two nights ago. Isn’t it too soon to see each other again?”

Addison shakes her head. “Don’t you want to see him?”

“Well, yeah, but what if he’s only asking to see me because he knows I want to see him and he doesn’t actually want to see me? I have to take Grayson to his soccer game. That’s so boring. Why would he want to do that?”

Addison rolls her eyes. “Because he’s obsessed with you?”

Colette groans. “Don’t you have a meeting in a minute?”

The next morning, Colette wakes up to knocking on her door. She gets up, surprised to find Anthony standing on the other side of the door with coffees in hand. “What are you doing here?” she whines.

“You never texted me,” he tells her, pushing past her and heading to her room.

“I, uh,” she hesitates. “Sorry, I forgot.”

Anthony sets the coffees down on her nightstand, pulling up her sheets as if he was going to start making her bed. “No you didn’t.”

“I did,” Colette tells him, her voice sounding more sure of her lie.

“You just didn’t text me.”

“Look, I love taking Grayson to his soccer games when my aunt can’t, but they’re really boring for other people. Last time I took Eddy, he complained the entire time,” she explains, taking the coffee from him. “I didn’t think you’d really want to sit through that.” Colette starts to get ready, sitting in front of the mirror in her room to get her hair together.

She makes eye contact through the glass with Anthony as he sits down on her now made bed. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”

a cartoon cinnamon bun

Anthony had his arms around Colette before they were even through the door, pinning her against the wall outside her apartment, his lips on hers. They had been like this since they were in the bar with the rest of their friends, them being teased that they needed to get a room. Since Anthony’s eyes got darker when he turned to her, his hands on her waist as he asked her who’s place was closer for them to get in a bed as soon as possible.

They barely made it through her door and had it shut when Anthony’s fingers danced along the hem of her shirt, pleading with her to take it off and practically ripping his off at the same time. Anthony and Colette stumbled their way to her bed, nearly losing contact with each other when they collapsed onto her mattress, skin to skin and Colette already deliriously happy.

They woke up the next morning, the sheets a mess, their clothing in a trail leading from her entryway to her bed. Colette’s phone was somehow on her nightstand next to her, buzzing continuously for what seemed like any hour. Anthony let out a groan, a result of the hangover he was probably feeling.

“Don’t get it,” he mumbles into her pillow, his arm wrapped around her pulling her closer. She could feel herself relax as his heartbeat gently thumped against her back. It buzzes again, Anthony starting to kiss his way from the nape of her neck down her spine, a giggle escaping her lips at his attempt to distract her.

“If it’s going off this much, it has to be something bad.”

“One time it was Eddy melting down and calling to tell you he got water on his new shoes.”

Colette scrolls through her phone, multiple missed calls from her friend group as Anthony’s mouth works his way back up to her neck, propping himself up to try to get her cheeks. Another call from Eddy appears on her screen, her heart racing that something bad happened to one of her friends.

“Hello?”

“Oh my god,” Eddy screams, “I thought Anthony murdered you.”

Anthony and Colette laugh, Colette switching over to speaker phone even though Anthony had no problem hearing their conversation without it. “No, we were asleep. What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been praying to God all morning that you were ok.”

“Eddy, it’s like 9 am, and you don’t believe in God.”

“I found God so I could pray that you were ok.”

“I didn’t realize she was lost, but sure. What’s wrong?”

“Your parents are on their way. They said they’d be at your place at 9 am.”

Colette looks at the time at the top of her screen: 8:56 am.

“Fucking shit,” she screams, dropping her phone on her bed and practically falling over the sheets as she launched herself off the mattress to collect the clothes scattered around her floor.

“What, what’s wrong?” Anthony calls after her, picking up what he can and throwing on the shirt that was still sitting by her front door.

“My parents are coming.”

“And?”

“You’re here.”

“Do you not want me here?”

Colette whips around to face him, thrusting his underwearing and pants from last night into his chest while trying to get her own shirt back over her head. “Of course, I do.” She runs past him and back into her room to throw clothes on and panic make her bed. “It’s just, you don’t have enough time to leave before they get here. And, if you’re here, then they’re going to start asking questions about whether or not you’re my boyfriend, and probably a bunch of other things, too.”

“Then we tell them I am,” Colette hears, seeing Anthony appear on the other side of her bed to help her straighten up.

She stops, standing straight up to stare at him. “What?”

“We tell them I’m your boyfriend.” He walks around to the other side of her bed to meet her. “Unless, you don’t want me to be your boyfriend.”

Colette opens her mouth, no words coming out. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

Anthony throws his head back in laughter, pulling her in for a hug and kissing the top of her head. “Of course I do.” Colette gives him a kiss, a knock at her door pulling them apart. “You get more clothes on, I’ll go meet your parents.”

Colette scrambles to find something presentable enough for her parents liking, trying her best to fix her hair and the makeup that she never took off from the night before when she hears laughter coming from her kitchen. She finally comes out of her room, her mom’s hand over Anthony’s while her dad is animated talking to him, a pink bag from her favorite bakery near their house on the table filling the room with the scent of the cinnamon buns that made her mouth water.

“Sweetie, we brought you some breakfast, but we didn’t know you had your boyfriend over,” her mom says, no hint of the fakeness Colette expected in her voice.

“Why don’t we all go out for breakfast?” Anthony says, getting up from his seat, “My treat. Colette and I can have the cinnamon buns later.”

Her mother swoons as he takes her hand and leads her to the door, a wink from Anthony sent Colette’s way that made her cheeks burn.

Her dad pulls her in for a hug, his arm around her shoulder as they follow Anthony and her mom down to his car. “Boyfriend, huh? Is he good enough for you?”

Colette hesitates, not sure why she did so before saying, “I think so.”

What if she wasn’t good enough for him?

a phone with an incoming call, no contact on the screen

“Franco, please, you’re giving me a headache,” Addison groans, her hands on her head to massage the headache away.

“No, I don’t care, you guys don’t understand how amazing she was.”

“We do, babe, I promise, but it’s 1 am,” Devyn tells him, giving him a gentle squeeze on his thigh.

“No, you don’t get it. She has only lost the all-around once on the national and international level in the eleven years she’s been qualified for elite,” Franco argues back, launching into a rant about Simone Biles that none of them wanted to hear when they wanted to go to sleep.

Eddy groans the loudest. “I think you talk this much about your fiance,” he points out Devyn taking a minute before she realized he was right and giving Franco a glare.

The rest of the group launches into an argument when Colette’s phone rings, Anthony’s name coming up with a picture of the two of them from one night when they fell asleep on the couch together. Eddy had taken the photo and immediately gotten a bucket of water to pour over them to wake them up because he wanted to go out and get food with someone. Despite the aftermath of the photo, seeing it made her smile every time.

“Hey,” she says, walking out of Devyn and Franco’s living room without her friends noticing. “How was the game?”

“We won,” Anthony tells her. They were on a west coast road trip that was supposed to end tomorrow with a game against Seattle.

“Why do you sound so sad, then?” Colette asks. Before they left, he told her they needed to do well this road trip in order to get into the wild card spot since the playoffs were right around the corner. They needed this win to get the cap between them and the next team even wider.

He lets out a long sigh. “I didn’t really play that well or that much.”

Colette could hear the sadness in his voice. She knew that he had been bouncing around to a few teams in the last couple of years, finally finding what he hoped was a more permanent home in Pittsburgh. “Did anyone score while you were on the ice?”

“No.”

“Did you get an assist or score?”

“Two assists, yeah.”

“Then what happened?”

She knew Anthony was scrunching his face. “I don’t know, I just felt off.”

Colette nodded. “I get that.” Anthony lets out a long breath. “Are you guys leaving after the game tomorrow or the next morning?”

“I actually don’t know. I guess I’ll find out when I’m on the plane,” he jokes, Colette laughing. “I can come over whenever I get in?”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling at the thought of seeing him. “If it’s tomorrow night, just wake me up when you come in.”

“Nah, I’ll let you sleep,” he says.

“No,” she argues, “I want to see you.” Eddy comes up behind her, making kissing noises at her.

“Tell Eddy I can hear him,” he laughs, Colette following suit. Anthony lets out a yawn. “Ok, I’m gonna go.”

“Bye, babe.”

“I love you, bye,” he yawns, hanging up before she could say anything else.

Colette stands there, staring at her phone with her mouth hanging open.

“What did he do? Do I have to kill him? I have enough gas in my car and money in my bank account to drive to San Jose and commit a felony,” Eddy starts, dragging her back into the living room with the rest of their friends.

“Lettie, what’s wrong?” Addison asks.

“Anthony just told me he loves me.”

The entire group’s jaws dropped, Eddy screaming loud enough that Colette was sure Devyn and Franco's neighbors could hear him. “What did you tell him?”

Colette shook her head. “Nothing. He said it and hung up the phone.”

“That rat bastard.”

“Eddy, say something helpful for once, please?”

Her friends start asking her a hundred questions, all coming at once. Why didn’t she call him back? Was she going to tell him she loved him? When was she going to tell him? When was she going to talk to him again in the first place?

Becca asked the question that made her stop. “Do you love him?”

Colette didn’t know what to say, trying to find the words. She knew she liked him, a lot. He was probably the person she could see herself loving for the rest of her life if he would let her.

“We should let her tell Anthony first, not us,” Devyn says, Colette letting out a little bit of an exhale as her friend told everyone it was probably time for them to go to bed.

She spent the night on their couch, Becca and Addison in their guest room, Eddy bringing his own blow up mattress and snoring on the floor near Colette.

She barely slept. Could she tell Anthony that she loved him? She could tell him anything, but if she did, would she mean it? It shouldn’t have surprised her that he would say it first, and it didn’t even surprise her that he said it at all. What shocked her most was that she wasn’t sure what she would say back.

Anthony was the kindest person to her, the one she wanted to call and see and be with all the time. She would do anything for him, but did that mean she loved him?

What if her love wasn’t enough? What if he ended up loving her more than she was capable of loving him?

“Eddy,” she whispers, trying not to scare him into waking up. She throws her pillow over to his mattress, hitting his face.

“The fish escaped,” he says, startled out of whatever his dream was. He rubs his eyes, groaning. “I was just about to save the country from the dinosaur fish.”

“You can go back to that in a minute,” Colette says, turning on the lamp on the end table next to her, despite Eddy’s groans. “When you were with Alex, how did you feel when you said ‘I love you.’”

“I think I was drunk and then blacked out.” Colette groans. “Lettie, if you’re freaking out about telling him you love him, then you don’t have to tell him right now. It’s ok for you to not say it if you aren’t comfortable with it.”

“That was out of character for you.”

“A stopped clock is right once a day.”

“Twice, Eddy.”

“Whatever, I’m going back to sleep. I hope this dream lets me play with kittens instead.”

Colette spent the next day stressing, running on pure anxiety due to her lack of sleep the night before. She hadn’t been able to watch Anthony’s game that night, falling asleep before it even started. She woke up Saturday morning to the sound of someone coming in her front door, hoping that it was Anthony and not an intruder.

“Colette?” Anthony calls, wandering into her bedroom to find her just sitting up, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “It’s nearly two pm, are you just waking up?”

“Don’t judge, I couldn’t sleep the other night. I guess it just caught up with me now.”

“I feel like I freaked you out after the game against San Jose,” Anthony says, sitting down. They had barely talked the day before, Colette purposely avoiding him under the guise of being busy all day with something at work. It wasn’t technically a lie, she just also hid her phone in her desk and forgot about it on purpose.

“No, you di-” she starts.

“I do mean it, though,” he says, pulling her in for a hug. “I do love you.”

Colette felt her heart start to race as she felt his hand on the back of her head. She could say it. She was sure it felt right. “Anthony,” she starts, feeling herself start to sweat as she pulls away to look at him. “I love you, too.”

Anthony smiles, kissing her.

Saying it felt just fine. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel more.

wheel of fortune tarot card

Colette was exhausted.

The entire last week was spent with her and Anthony unpacking all the things they had into their new apartment, trying to figure out what to get rid of and what to keep when they realized that consolidating their things meant they now had two of everything they needed to share with each other; two sets of silverware, two sets of plates and bowls, two bedroom sets, two sets of living room furniture.

Anthony was willing to get rid of anything he needed to, but Colette was having a harder time going through her things. She didn’t mind sharing, but she wanted her own stuff. What if she, for whatever reason, had to move out, or if Anthony got traded and had to take stuff with him and left her with nothing because the stuff he took was technically “his” and not her own?

“Hey, babe,” she calls into the apartment, a little bit of an echo following her through the few rooms they hadn’t finished unpacking yet.

“In here,” Colette hears, following Anthony’s voice into their bedroom. He was standing in front of the bookshelf he had built into the wall (by someone who knew what they were doing, not by him), putting up all the books she had brought from her old place.

“I told you I would organize these,” she told him, coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist, kissing his back. “I have a system.”

Anthony laughs, spinning around and hugging her back, kissing her on the lips. “Your system is ‘I have a bunch of books by this author, so they need to be together.’”

“And?”

“I’m not even touching your books yet,” he points out, turning her attention to all the boxes she left in the corner that were still, in fact, untouched. “These are my books.”

“I didn’t know you read.”

“Not all hockey players are illiterate, Colette,” he jokes, earning a laugh from her.

“No, I mean,” she starts, heading over to one of her boxes to start trying to organize them. “I know you normally don’t have time to do things other than, like, eat, sleep, and play hockey. Reading didn’t seem like something you had time for.”

“Well, you read a lot, so I thought I could do the same,” he tells her, his voice lower than normal. Colette looks up at the shelf he was putting books on; The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn amongst other books she loved and already had copies of sitting there on their own shelf.

“I already have these, you could have borrowed them at any time,” she points out, feeling Anthony’s arms around her, his chin resting on the top of her head.

“Yeah, but this way I can take them with me on the road and you’d still have your copies. I’d have a piece of you with me.”

What piece of him would she have with her while he was gone? She couldn’t think of anything as he spun her around in his arms to kiss her, feeling his smile against her lips while all she could feel was distress coursing through her.

a laundry basket full of clothes with a piece of clothing crumpled up in front of it

“What the hell?” Colette comes home from work to find that everything Anthony said he was going to get done was not done. He had promised he would get everything cleaned up before his friends came over tomorrow. “Anthony?”

Her boyfriend peers his head into the kitchen where she was standing, a smile on his face immediately fading when he sees the anger on hers. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, oh shit,” she says, gesturing around her. “This is the third day in a row that you said you would clean up.”

“I’m sorry, I got caught up.” He tells her, approaching her slowly, as if she were a tiger going to pounce on him with any sudden movement. “I’ll start now.”

Colette scoffs as he reaches out to her. He did this all the time. He would tell her that he would help her clean, especially when more than half of it was his mess to begin with, and then it always fell on her. “That’s not the point, Anthony,” she snaps at him.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“No, you aren’t. You tell me that every time you do this. You said you would help with the laundry, and look at where all the clothes are, not even in the basket still sitting on front of the washer and dryer where you left them two days ago,” she starts, gesturing to the mountain of dirty clothes she could see in their little laundry alcove that she swore she could smell from where she was standing. “The dishes from dinner on Monday are still here because you promised me after I cooked that you would clean them, but you disappeared instead and didn’t come home until after I went to bed. You have your coffee cup sitting on the table with coffee in it that I’m pretty sure is from at least three days ago. What the fuck is going on with you?”

“Nothing,” he says quickly, his face getting red as he turns towards the sink to start the dishes. “And, to be fair, you do this to me all the time. I come home from road trips and find you haven’t taken out the trash the entire time, or the dishwasher hasn’t been started. I’m sorry I forgot the last couple of days, but I’ve been busy.”

Colette bit her lip, knowing he was right. She was picking a fight with him they didn’t need to have, yet here she was anyway. “With what?”

“My job?” he says, shrugging, despite the slightest hint of a wavering going through his voice. It wasn’t just hockey. They were in the middle of a homestand and he had the day off today anyway.

Colette studies him for a second. “You’re lying to me,” she tells him. She could tell he tensed up from behind, the way he does when he’s not telling her the truth about something.

“I’m not.”

“Then what has been going on with you?”

Anthony hesitates, shaking his head and opening his mouth, clearly trying to figure out what to tell her. “Nothing. Like I said, I just got caught up.”

“With what?”

“Mat needed some help with something.”

Colette scoffed again, walking out of the kitchen and to their bedroom. She knew Anthony was following her, but shut the door behind her anyway. “Why would Mat need your help so urgently that he, on Long Island, needed to take you away from cleaning for the entire day here in Pittsburgh?” she asks, sitting on their bed as he opens the door back up.

“I can’t tell you that, it’s Mat’s business.”

Colette nods, knowing he was still lying. She pulls out her phone, pulling up her boyfriend's best friend's contact. “Hey,” she says when he picks up, seeing the wave of panic flash in Anthonys eyes as he pulled out his phone and started typing furiously on his own phone. She knew he was texting Mat. “Have you heard from Anthony today?”

“Uh, no, why?” Mat says, Anthony throwing his head back, sucking on his teeth and muttering ‘fuck’ under his breath.

“He just seemed a little off this morning when I left for work, I thought maybe hearing from you would cheer him up a little,” she lies to him.

“Oh, sure?” Mat tells her clearly confused before they hang up with each other.

“I can explain,” Anthony starts, sitting next to her on the bed and putting his hands in her lap.

Colette waits for a moment. “Then do it.”

“Tomorrow, I promise.”

She lets out a laugh. “No, now.”

“I can’t.”

Colette stares at him for a second, him still not looking directly at her but a pleading look in his eyes. “Are you cheating on me?”

Anthony finally looks at her. “What? Of course not.”

“Then what the hell is going on?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Anthony, you know everything about me. I tell you everything,” she says, looking around at the room they shared that he filled with her favorite things. She still hadn’t figured out what she would do for him. She could feel herself starting to panic, a year since they moved in together and she still barely knew anything about him. Colette shakes her head, looking down at his hands still in her lap. “We can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“If we want to be in a relationship like this, we have to tell each other what’s going on,” she lies. She couldn’t do this anymore.

“I told you, I can tell you tomorrow.”

“What is so important that you can’t tell me now?” she asks, getting up from the bed and starting to pace. Her mind started spiraling, thinking the absolute worst of what he could be hiding from her. She was self destructing, and blaming it on him was the easier way out. She knew it was. “You’re cheating on me, you’re going to break up with me, you have a child you haven’t told me about, you’re dying or you’re seriously sick.”

“Hey woah,” Anthony says, stopping her and standing in front of her. He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Colette, why don’t you trust me?”

Colette stares at him for a second, trying to find her words. “I don’t know.”

Anthony’s expression drops, his hands sliding down her arms as he shakes his head. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust me like this.”

Colette tries to hide the hurt that came with his statement. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t tell me the truth when I ask him for it.” The two of them stare at each other for a few moments in silence. “Does that mean we’re done?”

Anthony nods, his eyes not reaching Colette’s again. “I think so.”

a glass looking liquor bottle with a small amount of liquid inside, a solo cup on its side tipped over in front of it

The guy in front of Colette was so cute. At least, he was cute enough to flirt with while she was drunk and still wanting more drinks she didn’t want to pay for. The cup of rum and coke in her drink never seemed to empty for long enough with him standing there with her.

She wasn’t even sure what his name was. She wasn’t sure she cared what his name was.

She was pretending to listen to him while twirling a lock of her hair in her fingers, trying her best to make it look like she was intrigued so that he would get her a refill of her almost empty drink. It wasn’t how she normally flirted, but it was working for him, so why not?

“Lettie, babe, come on,” she hears Anthony behind her, his hands wrapping themselves around her waist and pulling her ever so slightly towards him.

A month ago, she would have done anything to feel his body against hers like this.

Now, she wanted nothing more than to get out of his arms.

“Anthony,” she tries to fight.

“This your bodyguard?” the guy asks her, looking incredibly pissed off.

“Boyfriend,” Anthony corrects him.

The guy scoffs, running his hands through his hair. “Nice.” He walks away despite her protests, not listening to her as she tries to pry herself free of Anthony’s grasp.

He laughs, leading her back to their friends. Colette sits down, a now empty cup in front of her since she didn’t get that last refill that she wanted. None of her friends noticed her not participating in their conversation, her anger toward Anthony increasing along with her sobriety.

“I think I’m going to call it a night,” she stands abruptly, nearly knocking over the table holding all of their drinks.

Anthony gets up with her, Colette not hearing him say, “I’m gonna turn in too, I’ll walk her home,” before she pushes her way out of the bar and into the muggy air outside.

“I don’t know how you could stand there and let him flirt with you when you made it pretty clear that you weren’t even interested in him,” Anthony whines, not noticing how annoyed she was with him. He was acting like a hero when he shouldn’t have been. “I mean, I can’t believe I had to step in and help you.”

“You didn’t,” she snaps at him, catching him off guard. “I was interested in him. He was nice. He was buying me drinks. That’s why he was flirting with me, because I was flirting with him.”

Colette thought that they were actually going to be friends, like they said they would be. They had been out together since they broke up. They had hung out with their friends in the exact same setting and had the exact same scenario happen but without this ending to the night. There was no reason why he should have stepped all over her like that to ‘save her,’ as he put it.

“What? Oh, come on, I know how you act when you’re flirting with a guy.”

“Do you?” she asks him, followed by him giving her a confident, ‘yes.’ “Really? So what do I do?”

“You, you,” he starts, knowing that he dug himself into a hole. “You smile at him, you laugh at everything he says, even if it isn’t funny. You run your hands through your hair because you know that fucking collar bone of yours drives me crazy.” He stops, both of them shocked that he just said that. That isn’t how she flirts with anyone, that’s how she acted around him when they were together. “Fuck.”

“Anthony, you cannot keep doing this. We broke up,” she starts, not adding that it was her fault, even though she still felt like it was. “Stop interfering when I’m with another guy.”

“I’m just trying to protect you,” he tries to defend himself.

“From what? From who? What could you possibly be protecting me from? Other guys? Why, Anthony?”

“Fuck, Colette, you think it’s easy watching you flirt with another guy? Just because we broke up, that doesn’t mean I stopped loving you,” he spits out.

Colette stands there, trying to process what he just told her. She could feel her heart racing, the sound of it beating the only thing she could hear. “I didn’t know you still loved me.”

Anthony scoffs, looking down at the ground, shaking his head. “Of course I did. I do. You haven’t noticed that I haven’t looked at another girl since we broke up? I want you, and only you.”

“I didn’t,” she tells him. “Anthony, you’re just saying this because you’re drunk.”

Anthony raises an eyebrow, shaking his head and biting his lip. “Look, I might be. But I know that drunk or not, I cannot sit around and watch you flirt with every guy in existence, while you, the one who was supposed to be my best friend, didn’t even notice that I was miserable while it was happening.”

“What do you want from me?” she snaps. “What am I supposed to do? We tried. We didn’t work. As much as we both wanted to, we did not work.”

They stared at each other for a moment, neither of them knowing what to say. He had to know it was her fault they broke up. It wasn’t mutual, not really.

“I guess, nothing,” he tells her, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Nothing at all.” He looks down at the ground and lets out a long sigh. “I’ll see you at the wedding,” is the last thing Anthony says to her before turning on his heels, leaving Colette alone on the sidewalk.

a ring, not on the ring finger

“Devyn really picked the worst shade of blue she could find for these dresses, didn’t she?” Devyn’s youngest sister, Blake, complains to the rest of the bridesmaids.

Devyn had just stepped out of the room to do her first look with Franco, leaving the girls alone to finish getting ready.

“She picked sapphire,” Becca said.

“You know,” Colette continues. “Her birthstone?”

“She should have picked a lighter blue. This dark blue totally clashes with my skintone.”

“Blake,” Kendall, her other sister scolds her, “Devyn didn’t give a fuck about your skintone when she picked her favorite color. Either you’re wearing the dress without complaint or I’m telling mom and you’re not in the wedding.”

The sisters keep bickering, Addison, Becca, and Colette slowly moving away from them.

“I always forget that Blake is still in high school,” Addison says, grabbing her bouquet before checking her makeup one last time.

“I don’t know how you could when she’s constantly tagging Devyn in her posts,” Colette points out.

“Especially the ones she’s not even in.”

“To increase her visibility,” Colette starts, reciting word for word what Blake had tried to explain to them during Devyn’s bachelorette party. “So she has more people who know her brand when she becomes famous.”

“Teenagers make no sense,” Devyn appears, a nervous look on her face. “I think we’re almost ready to start.”

“What’s wrong?” Addison asks.

“Colette, we have a problem.”

“What did I do?”

“Sebby thinks Becca is hot and wants to walk down the aisle with her.”

Colette could feel the color draining from her face at the realization of what this switch would mean for her.

“Is he Franco’s older or younger brother?” Becca asks.

“The older one.”

Becca turns to Colette. “I’m not coming back to the hotel room tonight,” she tells her, practically giddy. “Oh, wait.”

“That means Colette has to walk with-” Addison starts.

“Anthony,” the four girls say at the same time.

“I’ll be fine,” Colette says, her voice noticeably higher than it should be. She clears her throat, trying to calm herself considering the last time she talked to Anthony was the night he told her he loved her. “I’m fine.”

Devyn’s wedding planner, Jax, comes over to tell them it’s time to line up to enter with the groomsmen.

“I love you,” Devyn calls after her bridesmaids, all of them calling back to her the same sentiment.

Colette nearly stops breathing when she sees Anthony in his suit, helping Eddy adjust his tie. The suit fit him perfectly, Colette silently cursing the fact that Franco picked dark gray as the color. She hated to admit that she still thought about that one suit of his that he wore on game day, one that looked identical to the one he had on now.

“Hi,” she says, standing next to him, trying to not look at him.

“Hi,” he repeats, staring straight ahead at the back of Eddy’s neck.

The music starts, both of them rigid while everyone else around them is relaxed.

“I thought this would be us one day,” Anthony breaks their silence as the first couple starts to walk arm in arm down the aisle towards where Franco was already standing.

“What?” Colette asks, caught off guard.

Anthony nods, still staring in front of him as they move closer to the entrance of their venue. “I had the proposal all planned out. Had the ring. Had the reservation for dinner. Had a photographer. Everything. And then, the night before I was going to ask you, we broke up. That’s why I couldn’t tell you what was going on. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

Colette looks at him, not noticing that they were next to go down the aisle, Anthony taking Colette’s arm in his as Jax tells them to start walking.

a candle with a long wick, uncut, the lid propped up against the glass

“Are you sure you’re ok to come to this?” Franco asks her.

Colette hesitates for a minute. She hadn’t seen him in months, so she wasn’t sure why she was being invited to his apartment. She hadn’t been to his place since he moved in over a year ago, and honestly, Colette hasn’t intended on going. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’ve looked like you were going to vomit since we picked you up for this?” Devyn twists her body from the front seat to face her. “We can take you back home if you want.”

Franco pulls up in front of Anthony’s new place, knowing that she couldn’t ask them now to turn around and drive the entire way to and from her place again. “No, I’ll be fine.”

Colette takes in a deep breath as Devyn and Franco get out of the car, leaving her behind in the back seat to stare up at the building they were all supposed to be heading into. There was no need for her to be this nervous. She and Anthony were friends. They talked still, occasionally. Maybe once a week. And the conversations were never more than half an hour long, just to check in, but that’s adult friendships.

Right?

She gets out of the car, jogging to catch up with her friends as they were already to the elevator.

“You’re going to be ok, you know,” Devyn says, putting her arm around Colette.

“Yeah, we’ll kill him if you want us to.”

Devyn smacks her husband's chest with her free hand, scolding him as Colette laughs.

She could do this.

They make their way up to Anthony’s place, getting turned around and somehow ending up two floors above where they were supposed to be, thanks to Franco not being able to read a text message properly and upsetting one of Anthony’s elderly building neighbors. By the time they find his apartment, the place is full, their friends and Anthony’s taking up so much space they could barely move. Franco and Devyn break off from Colette, leaving her alone to scope the place out.

She wanders through his place, people in every single one of his rooms. She stumbles across what she assumes to be a guest room. It was way too neat to be Anthony’s own room, despite him always making her bed when they were together.

Mat appears behind her, laughing at the sight of the room. “I guess it’s easy to figure out which room is Tito’s, huh?”

Colette lets out a small laugh. “I was just thinking that.”

“How have you been?” he asks, sitting down on the bed.

She goes to join him, sighing. “I’m at my ex’s place for the first time since we moved out of the place we got together. Clearly, I’m on top of the world.”

“It could be worse.”

“Maybe,” she shrugs.

“Ok, what animal are you least afraid of?” Colette looks at him, confused by the non sequitur. “I’m trying to distract you.”

“Fine, fine,” she rolls her eyes as he nudges her shoulder. “I guess fish?”

“No, I said an animal.”

“And I said a fish.”

“No, a real animal?”

“Are fish fake?”

“You can’t find a fish at a zoo. Have you heard of fish zoos?”

“Yeah, they’re called aquariums, you fucking walnut,” Colette tells him, laughing so hard she could feel pain in her sides.

“Oh. Oh, yeah,” Mat sits there for a second, looking down at his hands with a smirk on his face while Colette continues to laugh. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh that hard since you broke up with him.”

“This is the first time we’ve seen each other since before he and I broke up,” Colette points out once she catches her breath.

Mat sighs. “I don’t think he’s laughed as hard as you just did since you two broke up.”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, not believing him.

“Colette, you make him want to live as long as possible so he can have as much time sharing the planet with you as he can. He has all of your favorite things in his Notes App on his phone that he will not delete. That one picture I took of you guys way back when we all met is still one of his lock screens, again that he won’t delete. I mean, look around his whole place. You are in every corner.”

Colette shakes her head. “Come on.”

“Look at that bookcase,” Mat says, bringing her over to the other side of the room. A picture of Devyn and Franco’s wedding party is framed on one of the shelves, one where he is looking at her so lovingly that someone in passing would assume they were the ones getting married while she was looking at the camera if not for what they were wearing. Her favorite candle scents were still unlit, sitting on the shelf next to all the books she loved by Leigh Bardugo and Gillian Flynn, the same ones from when they first moved in together, their spines now noticeably more worn, the copies loved by someone who had to have read them multiple times. She picked up the copy of Ninth House, seeing his writing in it and comments saying things like ‘remember when you said this to me?’ or ‘this has to be your favorite scene because’ left unfinished.

“He was writing these to me,” she realizes, not noticing Mat leaving the room.

“Of course I was,” Anthony says, her turning around so fast she loses her grasp on the book in her hands to send it falling to the floor. “I can’t really read these books anymore without thinking of you.”

“Why do you still have them all then?”

Anthony looks at the book on the floor. “How could I get rid of them?”

The two of them stand there in silence for what feels like forever. She wasn’t used to having Anthony in front of her and barely being able to find the words to say to him. She hated herself for losing him, but how could she have kept him? Colette takes in a deep breath. “We made a mistake breaking up, didn’t we?”

Anthony nods, shrugging. “Yeah, probably.”

“I don’t think we could ever go back, either.” Anthony sighs, opening his mouth to say something when Colette cuts him off. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

“Do what?”

“I think I’m still in love with you, but we can’t be together. We don’t trust each other,” Colette hears herself say, shocked at the words that come out of her.

Anthony closes the distance between them, taking her in his arms and hugging her so fiercely she could barely breathe. “I still love you, too.”

The two of them pull apart, both of them crying. They knew what this was for them.

“God, this sucks,” Anthony laments.

“It’s kind of amazing, though, isn’t it?”

“What?” Anthony asks, shock in his voice.

“How lucky we are that we got to love each other so much, that a simple goodbye could feel as devastating as this.”

two sets of eyes, one opened set, one closed set

“Don’t panic,” Addison says, Eddy rolling his eyes behind her.

“Yeah, because only good things come from people saying that,” Colette says, handing her friends the drinks she bought them. Becca was somewhere with Devyn and Franco, the six of them out together for one of their increasingly rare nights when they could all be together without having to worry about anything outside the building they were in.

“She thinks she saw some of Anthony’s teammates,” Eddy explains, guiding them back to the rest of their friends.

Colette rolls her eyes, looking back to her friend who had already downed more than half her drink. She knew that Addison had a drunken habit of mistaking strangers for people she actually knew, or thought she knew. Just because she thought she saw some of his teammates, that didn’t actually mean anything. “I think we can save the panic for when we know we see him, instead.”

“You’re already panicking about seeing him again?” Becca asks, overhearing only the last part of the conversation as they arrive back at the table.

“We are talking about different people,” Colette says. “I was just with Carter last night.”

“That’s, what, almost every night that’s he’s not away for the last five months that you’ve spent the night together, isn’t it?” Devyn asks, stirring her drink with her straw.

“Yeah,” Colette sighs.

“Oh, no,” Franco groans.

“You guys seem really in to each other.” Becca points out.

“I mean, physically, it’s great. But, he just,” Colette starts, trying to figure out what to say. She knew exactly what bothered her; it was why she broke up with Anthony in the first place. “He doesn’t really know me.”

“Holy shit,” Eddy says, nearly choking on his drink. The group follows his gaze to see that Addison was right; Anthony’s teammates were there at the bar, but so was Anthony.

Not only was he there, but he had his arm around a girl, guiding her through the place to see if they could find an open table, the only one close to them being the one right next to them.

“You make it worse if you freak out,” Devyn scolds him.

“Hi,” Anthony says when he sees her, standing right next to their table.

“Hey, bud,” Eddy greets him, Franco punching him in the arm for the over enthusiasm.

“We’re going to go get more drinks,” Becca says, all of Colette’s friends grabbing their clearly new drinks in front of them and excusing themselves from the table.

Anthony awkwardly chuckles as they all leave, just him and Colette alone for the first time in what felt like forever. “So they haven’t changed.”

Colette felt a pit in her stomach. “You didn’t have to stop talking to them because we don’t talk that much. I mean, you were in Devyn and Franco’s wedding.”

Anthony nods, taking a sip of his drink before setting it down on the table in front of her. He was still standing awkwardly, Colette knowing that he wouldn’t ask to sit down with her. “Talking to them made me think about talking to you.”

The two of them sit in an awkward silence for a moment.

“So who was-”

“I saw you-” they start to say at the same time, both of them letting out a laugh in hopes it would calm them down.

“You first,” Colette tells him.

“I saw you started seeing someone,” he brings up, leaning against the table as he looks down at his drink, a sad smile on his face.

Colette cringes, nodding. She forgot she still had him on her private story. “Yeah, but it won’t last much longer.”

“Oh.”

“I saw you were here with someone?” she asks, gesturing to the girl who was with his teammates.

Anthony looks over, waving at his friends and the girl. “That’s Mat’s little sister. She’s just here to visit.”

“So are you seeing anyone?”

Anthony shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” Colette hears herself say, gesturing to him to sit down next to her.

He waves her off, taking the seat previously occupied by Franco across from her. “It’s fine. I’ll find someone else eventually.”

“No, I mean,” Colette starts, taking in a deep breath and trying to figure out what to say after all these years of not saying what she wanted to. What she should have said. They both knew they had already found each other and they let it go too soon. “I’m sorry for ending things. I’m sorry for being the reason everything fell apart. I’m sorry I didn’t show you how much I love you the way you showed me.”

Anthony looks up from his drink, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You knew everything about me. You have my favorite books, you always knew exactly what I wanted to get when we went out to dinner before I had the chance to tell you, you know my mood based on the smallest things I do. You showed me you love me with everything. I didn’t do that for you.”

Anthony gives her a sad smile. “You always showed me you loved me.”

“Not the way you did. I feel like I knew nothing about you the way you knew me.”

Anthony shakes his head. “You know me better than I know myself.” Colette starts to shake her head, about to dispute him when he cuts her off. “If I had a bad game, you always had a cup of tea ready for me when I got home with a note telling me how you knew I’d be fine next game. You never tried to minimize how I felt after a game and listened to everything I told you. If I had to get up early for practice or to leave for a road trip, you had my coffee ready for me before I was even awake sitting on the nightstand waiting for me, even if you hadn’t slept great the night before. I’d open my bag and find the notes you wrote for me hidden in my suit pockets so I’d have them with me in the locker room. You still text me after games to tell me you’re proud of me. You think you didn’t show me you loved me? I’ve never felt more loved by anyone before meeting you.”

“I didn’t think those things meant anything.”

“They meant everything.”

I love you

Colette walks into the studio, paper in hand. She had booked yet another appointment with her favorite artist, Eleni, months ago, going back and forth as to what she wanted. Her left arm was covered in a series of small tattoos as it was, enough space right at the start of her forearm for one last small tattoo.

“Hey, Let,” Eleni greets her.

“Hi, Len,” she smiles back, handing her the piece of paper.

“You want the words, ‘I love you?’” Eleni asks, eyebrow cocked. Colette swallows, knowing that this was the last thing she wanted on her arm. “Whose writing is this? I know it’s not yours.”

“Anthony’s,” Colette admits after what felt like too long of a silence for it to be anyone else's.

“Are you sure you want this?”

Colette forces out a laugh. “Every tattoo on my arm relates to him in some way, you know that. You put them all there. The book with the sun, the solo cup, the wheel of fortune. Might as well finish it off with how we feel about each other.”

Eleni takes in a deep breath, getting Colette ready for her tattoo. “I don’t get why you two aren’t together.”

Colette sighs. “I fucked up. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fix it. Not in a way that matters, anyway.” Eleni gives her a sad look, Colette shaking her head and waving it off. “Besides, just because you think you’re ‘meant to be’ with someone, doesn’t mean you’ll actually ‘be.’”

#the summer fic exchange 2k24 #anthony beauvillier #tito beauvillier #anthony beauvillier fic #tito beauvillier fic #pittsburgh penguins #penguins #penguins fic #pittsburgh penguins fic #anthony beauvillier x oc #tito beauvillier x oc #nhl #nhl fic

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hyena-honeybadger · 4 months ago

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This is my first post, I will mostly do cod smut and fics, if you have any suggestions I’d greatly appreciate it.

{I very much recommend listening to change by deftones during reading this as that was a huge inspo to my writing style}

CW: Smut, angst, mean/abusive price, child abuse, blood, manipulation, kinda dub-con, kidnapping, Stockholm syndrome, torture, mental torture.

Katz und Maus

- Every day seemed the same when you’re were a ghost, it blended together, not living but merely haunting. You’ve never been off base, you live the life of a soldier but never go on missions… price wouldn’t allow it, your his daughter but barely, your no t related, and he never treats you like one. You believed at some point he loved you, you thought that at some point he actually like the idea of having a little girl, a princess he could spoil, somebody he could dress up, raise. Now he doesn’t know how he could ever think that, he had a job and nobody to look after you, he soon saw his ‘daughter’ as a pest in his own home. He’d be gone for weeks on missions, he’d come back hands bloodied, the lingering scent of blood and the cigar he’d smoke. He’d just sit on the couch in silence. You never knew when was the turning point of the house becoming oh so quiet, as years past and you grew up you both had had the mutual understanding of just living with each other. He now never talked of you, it was never “my daughter.” It was “Y/N.” The most you’d usually talked was when he’d make a cutting comment, and as much as he tried to care, try to find the dream of having a daughter you were never that. So he’d just say things, with well honesty “you should workout more.” “Your really gonna eat that?” “Have a great time dressing like that with a base full of men.” You hated it, but all do did was nod in hopes that one time one of his comments would be one of praise… but honestly all you’ve ever wanted was a father …or somebody… anybody… yet you didn’t try to talk to anyone on base, they have gotten used to you not talking that it would be odd if you did… you didn’t find much of a point of anything, your mind constantly tormented by imagery you had wished your sorry mind had repressed and forgotten about but was instead instead another tool used by life to torture you. Break your will. How did I get here… why am I here…

- Blood dripped down your nose as a reminder of your existence, that your not yet a ghost. It was so quiet… so cold… the night was almost a void you wandered in lost in your own empty sorrowful mind, not knowing how far you’ve gone from base. Things that you knew didn’t exist stung in your mind, it festered… it got worse, blood, the knife… your mothers scream… and something new… leaves crunched behind you. “Schatz~” your whole body stings in shook, legs buckle yet you don’t fall. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real. You echo in your mind and yet the footsteps get louder, to frozen to move, you let this entity approach. “Your ways away from your base aren’t you maus?” You shudder not being able to wander haunted by this voice, your body refuses to turn around, not wanting to know what horrible imagery your mind would come up with to torment you, you tightly close your eyes…drip... Once again that blood reminds you your alive… I’m real… the thing behind me isn’t… yet your were so utterly mistaken. Your eyes flash open and you feel a tight hand over your mouth, you try to scream out but your voice is trapped in your throat, you thrash around, but he was stronger. Your eyes immediately glaze over in fear. Something pricked you and your neck stung but only for a minute before collapsing, your weak body caught by him. Your consciousness slipping, you tasted blood in your mouth from your nose… this is real… he is real…you slump unto the ground gradually your body lying against his legs, a quiet laugh echos and your in the void…

KONIG POV…

I had been watching the 141 base for a while, I was staked out on the outskirts of the base I had access to there cameras and just waited, if there were an opportunity I wouldn’t be shy to seize it. As a watched over i saw the court yard,few soldiers grouped up, smoking, laughing… i flipped around the other cameras nothing notable. eventually I circled back around to the one of the courtyard… the group seemed to be looking at something out of the vision of the camera, one tall guy points to it and seemingly waved it over, yet there expression wasn’t one of humour or playfulness instead, a darker look, a glare to whoever this was. They said something. A girl wearily walked into sight of the camera shakily, she sharply glanced around if as she didn’t know what was going on and how she got there, confusion and innocent fear plastered on her face. The group radiated aggression, one walked up to her and grabbed her wrist to which she pulled away. Poor maus… His hand whipped across her face, she fell, face darkened on the camera with blood… she was then collapsed on the ground, shaking like a cold kitten, the man standing menacingly above her yelling something. The rest of the group laughing behind them. I watched this go on for a few minutes, yelling, laughing, shaking. At some point the group must’ve gotten bored and had left the poor maus alone, to which she sat, hands covering her face, shaking.

I hope you enjoyed this, I'm fully new to posting, so I might be inconsistent at first. I know it's not that much smut, but stay tuned!

Stay tuned for part. two !

- By Hyena -

#Cod #konig x reader #konig cod #konig smut #kidnapping k1nk #stockholm #call of duty #angst #konig #dark smut

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tarochimochi · 10 months ago

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Winner Gijinka redesign! I like to think they swap between the skirt and pants depending on the challenge.

Uh I don’t know why I thought their old design was ever okay to bestow on human eyes!

Cut below the entire design process (it’s gonna be long)

So I knew immediately after finishing my Loser design I wanted Winner to be the opposite of Loser. Which ment no warm colors, no vest sleeveless thing, no sunglasses, esc. I wanted them to be 80s inspired to match my Loser’s 70s Inspiration! I wanted them to parallel Loser by being so different but the same at the same time. So I wanted to do alot.

I think very clearly with the first ever winner draft (on the right) I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING LOL. I really don’t like it now looking back and it really doesn’t feel like Winner to me. I think just to show how old this is, this was before I even made established age headcanons so I also had no idea how older I wanted Winner to be.

That age headcanon list will probably be shown at another time, I think I showed it once on instagram after somebody asked.

The one on the left I did right after I finished my Loser design and oh my god I also really hate it looking back. I had this idea that Winner’s hair could be the opposite of Loser’s hair where instead of being from like brown to blond and lighter blond it would be the opposite and oh it looked horrible to me.😭

I think also at this point Winner was still just black and not biracial

Now here are what I would call my “Stuck in design hell”. Characters I struggle with immensely when creating a design I think fits/I personally also like for them. It doesn’t mean I have no ideas, some of them I know exactly what I want to do with them but can’t figure out how to emulate it. I ended up abandoning Winner for awhile because they were giving me so many problems because I set so many restrictions for myself which weren’t exactly working.

So then we got this.. I tried to force myself to finalize their design on the spot… bad idea.. worse idea I could ever fathom. I don’t like any of these designs and plus the way I draw now has changed since I made these designs. I had an idea that Winner’s arm could also be translated as one of those super cool arm grabber toys from the 80s which I don’t know, maybe I’ll bring back?? Depends on how I feel about it after focusing on writing more Winner central stories and exploring Winner more as a character and talking to people who really like Winner.

I should also note the inspo for Winner in the fluffy coat and overalls came from the fact that when I was in the movie theater, I saw a kid wearing black overalls and periwinkle jacket and went “HOLY SHIT WINNER TPOT.”

Somewhat unrelated but in this design Winner also became Biracial because @/exitstudent was like “Oh Winner feels afro-Latino to me” so I changed my headcanon almost immediately. This is why I probably shouldn’t have put my race hc chart out so early because my opinions get swayed so easily PLUS I changed a few things around. (Nothing to major, Snowball and Spongey are Wasian now, Donut is Dutch, put Bomby back in Blasian, Gaty is Finnish)

I also had the idea that instead of Winner having highlights (because I highly doubt Winner would go out of their way to highlight their hair) their greying really early on due to stress and poor genetics probably. Another cool parallel to Loser about how Loser’s hair is something he essentially paid for Winner in a way earned theirs. Loser also bleaching pretty much all their hair would also be a cool symbolism for how he’s not the truest to himself while Winner’s still having almost all their natural hair color is symbolism for them being way more true to themself. But that’s for another day to explore.

I tried to interpret Winner’s shape as being kind of like fuzzy fleece on their jacket and I tried to make this work so bad but I really shouldn’t have. I was just all over the place with the colors too.

After design a bunch of the other characters and finding and discovering new ways i like drawing i quickly figured out why I was hating Winner so badly.

It was everything 😭

So after actually after researching 80s fashion instead of half assing it to make it obvious. I drew up these two concepts.

My first realization was “Wow that fleece is ugly as shit.” So I realized I had to stop trying making the fleece work, kudos to anyone who can. But away from the negatives, I really did love the big black Jacket and the legwarmers (I am a sucker for leg warmers so once I put them in them, it was over for me) Something about the headband also struck me because previously I out a strict “no head accessories rule” but honestly? It really just had to be not sunglasses so the headband stayed.

With some color rework and some help from my qpp (Shout out to her, she doesn’t use social media.) We were finally able to get the current design shown!

I guess if I learned anything from this, people should make gijinkas also based off people they know and see in day to day life. Some of my favorite gijinkas are based off people I know. Like Match being an Afro-Chilean Jew is because my friend who actually introduced me to BFDI was a huge match fan, and an Afro-Chilean Jew so I was inspired to make Match look almost identical to them. With Winner I pulled inspiration from alot of popular Black celebrities in the 80s and Chile again because of said friend 80s.

Thanks for reading this whole kuffuffle here’s some bonus doodles!

Yes Winner is going to crush Loser and Clock, stop them.

The last winclock one may or may not be a reference to something.

Now who’s next? Honestly just whoever people want a ref of next, I think I’m a little burnt out from doing now 59 characters and drafting more currently I think I need a break. Although I’m definitely gonna redesign Clock’s outfit, I’m really starting to dislike it. Until next time bye bye!!

#bfb #bfdi #tpot #battle for dream island #battle for bfdi #battle for bfb #the power of two #my art #tpot winner #winner tpot #bfdi winner #winner bfdi #neps.pawprints #bfdi gijinka #gijinka #humanization

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gamerbearmira · 1 year ago

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Here's an AU idea I had. Took some inspo from your Protective AU and ReikoMizutani's 'Whatever it Takes' fic. Mama Julieta is pissed and takes matters into her own hands.

Julieta stood in the courtyard of Casita, it was the dead of night and everyone else was asleep, and the only light came from the glowing candle that sat in the windowsill. Julieta looked up at the candle with pure disdain, she didn't understand, everyone had been given a special gift, everyone except little Mirabel, her gift ceremony was a few weeks ago, and the poor girl had been inconsolable ever since, she's convinced there's something wrong with her or she did something bad to not get a gift, but Julieta refuses to believe that, her Mirabel is the sweetest girl in the world, she deserves a gift more than anyone. As if being denied her birthright wasn't enough, people had begun to treat her differently, the townspeople gave her weird looks and whispered behind her back, Isabela had begun to distance herself from Mirabel, and Alma practically avoided her like the plague, shooing her away whenever she sought her out. To top it all off, Bruno had disappeared the night of Mirabel's ceremony, Julieta didn't know what to think about that, sure she was worried sick for her hermanito, but she had a horrible feeling that Bruno's disappearance was tied to Mirabel's ceremony in some way, if her brother had left simply because he was freaked out Mirabel didn't get a gift she would personally strangle him. It made her blood boil, Mirabel was crying herself to sleep each night in a nursery she had been promised she would move out of by now and was being ostracized by her own town and family for something she couldn't control, and it was all that stupid candle's fault!

Julieta seethed silently in anger until a clatter of tiles at her feet pulled her away from her thoughts, "what is it Casita?" She asked, unable to hide the anger in her voice, the house rumbled as it rearranged itself, forming a staircase up past the second floor and to the windowsill that held the candle. Julieta was confused but climbed the staircase nonetheless, she peeked through the window into the candle room to make sure her mother wasn't there before staring down at the candle like it was a piece of trash. "Why?" she asked angrily, "why did you do this to her? You were supposed to protect this family, how is ostracizing Mirabel protecting the family? All the other children got gifts, how is that fair? How does making Mirabel feel like she did something wrong, or isn't good enough for your miracle, help anyone?!" Julieta took deep breaths to keep herself from raising her voice further, the last thing she needed was to wake someone up. "Why?" She asked again, "doesn't she at least deserve an explanation?" The candle seemed to spark in response, was the candle mocking her? Julieta's anger came to a boiling point and she grabbed the candle in frustration, having half a mind to just throw it to the ground or snuff it out right then and there, but before she could do either of those things, the candle flared up and Julieta felt a burst of magic course through her.

The miracle answered, and everything became clear, of course, how could she have not seen it before? It wasn't the candle, or the miracle, it was Alma, she had always put so much pressure on the family, to use their gifts to serve the community, to earn their miracle, she demanded nothing less than perfection, Pepa was never allowed to just let her emotions be, she always had to bottle everything up and force moods on herself to make whatever weather was convenient, Julieta was practically chained to the kitchen since the day she turned five, seriously, who makes a five year old cook food for an entire town? And how many times have people come to her stand with minor injuries that would heal on their own within a week? It was ridiculous, poor Dolores had to hear so many uncomfortable things, invading other people's privacy just for the sake of 'keeping an eye on things' like she was little more than a walking surveillance system, and little Luisa, she had just gotten her gift a few years ago, but she was already saddled with so much work, just last week she had moved an entire house just so the owner wouldn't have to deal with their noisy neighbor, Julieta had tried to protest this, saying Luisa was too young to lift something that heavy, even with her super strength, but Alma had brushed her off, saying Luisa was 'just doing her part to help the community' why hadn't she objected more? She could see her daughter struggling under the weight, why hadn't she done more to stop it? It's no wonder Bruno left, Alma had always insisted he do visions to foresee potential danger and then chastise him when he gave a vision someone didn't like, as if he controlled the future. Bruno had already cracked under the pressure, how much longer until the rest of the family followed suit? Well no more.

Julieta held the candle close as she descended the staircase back to the ground floor, "thank you, Casita" she said as the home once again rearranged itself, the staircase now leading to a blank space on the wall of the second floor. Julieta smiled as she reached the second floor, she knew her daughter wasn't to blame for the failed ceremony, and she had been right, it was Alma's fault, Alma had put the gifts and serving the community over the well being of her family, in trying to 'earn' their miracle she had actually weakened it, to the point where the magic wasn't strong enough to give Mirabel a gift, Julieta would make sure the town knew who was to blame for the failed ceremony, she had heard far too many rumors about that regarding her daughter, but first she had to right her mother's wrong. Julieta put her hand on the wall, and the candle once again glowed brighter, the wall swirled with magic until it eventually formed a blank door, complete with an intricately carved doorknob engraved with an 'M', Mirabel's door was back, Julieta couldn't wait to see the look on her little girl's face, and she would make sure it works this time, Alma won't take anything else from this family ever again.

Bruno was startled from his sleep as Casita threw him off of the chair, "what was that for Casita?" He asked, Casita pointed towards the door of his makeshift room, urging him to look beyond it, Bruno shrugged and opened the door to see whatever it was Casita wanted him to see, in the darkness, it took Bruno a moment to see what it was Casita had woken him for, the cracks, which had laced the walls since long before Bruno took up residency there, were gone, some smaller cracks still remained, but the bigger ones that Bruno had tried desperately to patch had disappeared, as of they were never there. Bruno could only stare in shock as he thought back to his final vision, the one that drove him to hide within the walls:

Mirabel, standing in front of a cracked Casita, with Alma looming over her, holding the snuffed out candle and giving a stern look Bruno had come to expect from her, but shifting the tablet showed a different image, Mirabel in front of a now intact Casita, and instead of Alma, it was his sister Julieta, holding the burning candle as she smiled down at her daughter.

WHATEVER ITS TAKES MENTIONED RAHHHH 🦅🦅🦅

You i finished reading the rewrite. Amazing. Love the writing and the writer is so nice, y'all should check it out, its so good.

ANYWAY THIS IS SO RAD. I honestly need to do more protective content, its been a while (then again I need to revisit ALL my older aus tbh). Candle holder Julieta...I'm so down with it. Like who she is the most caring and she always has her family's beat interest in mind. Especially Mirabel. Imagine how heartbroken Julieta is whenever she's sees Mirabel mopping around. And she even noticed the other family members at their struggles. Like she wasn't having it anymore, and she is so real for that.

Also, random asf, but I love it when. They bully the candle. Like why bully each other, GET THAT CANDLE❗❓ anyway shout to candle for helping Julieta see who's REALLY at fault (Alma I still love you <///3).

Shameless plug to give fanart for whatever it takes and this snippet Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ

ALAO BRUNO!!! COME OUT THE WALLS!!! Or like. Something. Hopefully he sees Julieta taking a stand 😭

THIS IS SO GOOD I LOVED READING IT (twice) AND I CAN'T WAIT FOR MORE (if you have it and want to share with the class <333)

'Whatever It Takes" is by @reikomizuao3 on AO3 <3333

#my asks #my asks are open #encanto #encanto au #au #encanto mirabel #encanto alma #encanto bruno #encanto julieta #protective au #whatever it takes #we need more evil Madrigals #but like not towards each other #towards the REAL problem 🤨#but also I don't condone violence guys

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lovesunshinefelix · 1 year ago

Text

Perfect dad

Tags: dad!skz x reader (no specific member mentioned so just imagine any of them), angst (??), reader has heart eyes for dad!skz

Author's note: hello omg it took me a while to get back to writing 😭 my burn out has been soooo bad since my term break so I hope y'all understand 😭 also really fucking sad about Chan's room 🥹 I seeked so much comfort from that small part of my life until it's suddenly just gone 🥹 so I hope upon reading this fic you'll get a little bit happy somehow. Also, this was in my drafts for a while. I originally thought of this with Felix in mind but I eventually thought that this suits the other members too. I got inspo from watching Modern Family 🥹 I acc love that show so much I think I'm in my fifth rerun 😭 anw I hope you would all love this !

“Rough day?” you asked, closing the car door behind you and giving your husband a kiss upon seeing him pouting in your car. He just nods at you, giving you no explanation whatsoever. You just laughed as he drives away from the grocery store.

You were out running some errands for your family, which left your husband to hang out with his daughters’ boyfriends. You both have 3 children in total, all grown up. Your two daughters all thought it would be a fun idea to have their dad hang out with their boyfriends. At first, he seemed delighted with the idea, picking out itineraries that would be fun for all of them to do. You figured it all came crashing down when he suggested he pick you up, contrast to what you and your eldest daughter talked about. “Tell me what happened?” You asked, to which your husband lets out a fit of rage.

To their boyfriends making him feel out of place, to them complaining about how horrible was the plot of his chosen film for the day, your husband was really frustrated about the day. You really tried listening to his dilemma, but as he was going on to you about how much of an “assholes” their boyfriends were to him, you were just reminded of how good of a dad he is to your daughters; He has been so hands on with them even when they weren't born yet, and this never faded the minute they were born, making sure he could capture everything that they did. From the second they started crawling to babbling, and even walking, he made sure he caught it on camera. From canceling a whole day of work just because they’re sick to rushing to their recitals from a comeback stage. He always made sure that he made it known that he loved his kids and will always do.

“And I really want to get along with them, I really do.” he said, making a turn towards a street you’re unfamiliar with. “But they’re making it so fucking difficult for me.” he said. You just giggled at his complaints, “Love, I’m sure there will be other opportunities for you to have a deeper bond with them in the future.” you said, to which he just huffed at you. “You say that because they already respect you.” he said, “They better! I’m the one who took care of their girlfriends starting from my womb.” you argued, to which you both just laughed. “By the way, did you realize that we’re currently nowhere near home right now?” you asked him with a chuckle. “Oh I did that on purpose. They’re still at home with the girls and I still have a lot to tell you.” he said, taking a sip of the drink he bought before picking you up. “You idiot. I bought some meat and dairy back there!” you exclaimed, chuckling at your husband. “But I still have to complain to you!” he pouted, looking at you for a second before focusing his eyes on the road. “One way or another, they have to have a bond with you if they want to marry our daughters.” You said to him, “You really think so?” he asked, to which you hummed in response. “You were literally the perfect dad for them. If they can’t form a bond with you then I don’t think our daughters would settle for less.” you said, grabbing his hand that was resting on the gear stick and holding it. “I taught them so.” you smiled at him, to which he smiled. You gave him a peck on the cheek and you notice him make his way back to the direction of your home. “Wanna go home already?” you asked. “Yeah, I miss our kids already. Fuck their boyfriends.” he said, to which you just smiled and leaned on his arm.

No matter how well their boyfriends treat your daughters, you always know that they’ll always fall short of him.

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jackassbrainrot · 4 months ago

Note

Inspo from Johnny x bam one (very good btw)

But like… feminized bam

Like turned on embarrassed fem

Anywayssss

dude looks like a girl [knoxville x bam]

desc: Bam finds out first hand that New York City is where your wildest dreams come true

a/n: based very loosely on actual events, when Bam and Knoxville woke up in bed together with makeup on. made it slash again whoops. hope you like it! also the bar is so very imaginary I do not have the slightest clue about bars in NYC. think this is the longest fanwork I've ever written

warnings: smut, dirty talk, feminization, feminine pet names for a man, bam margera's canonically small dick, facefucking, anal sex

word count: 2352

This isn't what Bam had expected when Knoxville invited him up to New York for a "fashion party". The night had started normally, though admittedly being more Knox's scene, a million new faces he had to make small talk with, slowly sipping at cocktails that would've been horribly overpriced if the sponsors hadn't taken care of that for them. He was trailing behind his costar like a lost puppy, trying to avoid mind numbing conversations by letting him do the talking, while he busied himself with his fruity little drinks and trying to understand what the fuck they were at a party sponsored by MAC cosmetics.

"Stop following me around like a lost child." Johnny gritted through his teeth, trying to keep his voice low as they walked through the crowd. "Man, I don't know anyone here, what do you expect me to do?" Bam retorted, sounding like a teenager whose parents dragged him to a family reunion he really didn't want to be at. As they were having their little argument, a familiar face emerged from the crowd.

"Finally someone I can stand." The petite woman said, embracing Knoxville before turning to Bam. "And you've brought a new victim to the cruel world of the entertainment industry." She joked, looking him up and down as if she was trying to recognize the much younger man. "Janeane, this is Bam, one of the guys I'm legally allowed to torture on set." The woman, Janeane, laughed, extending her hand to shake Bam's. "I'm Janeane Garofalo, and I'm whatever you two are." She explained her profession in such a roundabout way that the young man didn't quite understand, but he took her hand in his anyway. "I'm a skateboarder actually." He corrected Johnny's earlier statement, though it wasn't exactly wrong.

"Alright, now that we've got that out of the way, you two wanna get outta here with me?" Her question made Bam perk up instantly, which she noticed but waited expectantly for Johnny's answer. "I think I'm gonna stay for a bit longer, but you can babysit him for a while if you want." He half joked, wanting to get Bam off his back. "We'll be at Velvet on 27th!" Janeane yelled back at Knoxville as she dragged Bam toward the door. She told him the plan for the night as he lead her to his car, driving to her place so she could change before heading to Velvet.

When they arrived at her flat, she dumped her bag on the table, a myriad of makeup products fell from it. "What? It's not like they're going to miss it." She said when she saw Bam's eyes widen. "I'm not judging you, I just didn't expect it like, at all." He laughed, sitting down on his couch as she went into her room to change. "Help yourself, if you want." He heard her yell from her room, trying to resist the urge to do just that. He felt weirdly drawn to the pile, despite never really being interested in makeup aside from copying Ville Valo's eyeliner on rare occasions. Janeane walked out of her room, dressed in a less "industry party" outfit than before, sporting jeans and a tank top, her makeup reminiscent of grunge movement of the past decade.

"Wait, I've got a genius idea!" She exclaimed when she saw his gaze was locked on the makeup. "Can I do your makeup?" She asked eagerly, looking like she was going to burst out of her skin at any moment. "You sure I'm not gon' get beat up or some shit?" Bam asked, apprehensive but not fully opposed to the idea. "You'll be just fine at Velvet, I promise." She stuck out her pinky finger to him, which he mirrored, rolling his eyes but a smile crept on his lips.

Janeane got to work right away, pulling a chair out for him and collecting all the supplies she would be needing. Black eyeshadow, an eyeliner pencil, mascara, and a dark red lipstick she shoved into her pocket for later. She tightlined his waterline with the eyeliner the best she could with his whining and twitching. "I feel like you're trying to kill me." He said when he felt the pen poke his inner eye corner as she connected the top and bottom waterline at a point. "Stop being such a baby." She smiled, putting down the pencil and going for the eyeshadow to smoke it out a bit. "Blink." She said as she brought the mascara wand to his eyes, finishing the look.

As she finally moved away, Janeane admired her work. Bam looked absolutely showstopping, the dark makeup around his eyes making them look even brighter than usual, the icy blues looked like they could cool down the sun. "I think Knoxville's gonna fall straight on his ass when he sees you." She said, handing him a mirror to look at himself. He sat there for a moment, stunned, a "holy shit" leaving his lips as he moved the mirror around to look at himself from every angle. "Stop staring at yourself, let's go!" She pulled him up from his seat, dragging him out of her apartment and all the way to the bar.

Velvet was what Bam would call a haggard looking bar. The walls were lined with posters that were falling apart due to age, the leather upholstery was scratched and half of it was covered in permanent stains and the smell of smoke was burned into the walls forever. But despite all of that, he was enjoying himself, sitting in a booth with Janeane, talking on and on about anything and everything they could think of. Bam saw Janeane's face light up suddenly, waving someone, who he assumed was Johnny, over to their booth.

When he sat down next to Bam, his eyes widened under his shades as he noticed the makeup, heat going down to his crotch at seeing the skateboarder look so pretty. Janeane shot Bam a knowing glance before they all went on with their conversation. "I see you two had fun without me." Knoxville said, alluding to the sight that was making it hard for him to think straight. "You wouldn't believe it, man." Bam commented, smiling at Janeane before taking a sip of the beer in front of him. The conversation continued normally, apart from the fact that Knoxville was obviously stealing glances at the younger man behind his shades.

After a few rounds, Johnny was at the end of his rope, mind fogged with images of Bam under him, his eyeliner messed up from crying and his soft lips hanging open as moans fall from his mouth. "I think we should get going." He said, patting Bam's thigh, higher than would be considered normal, hoping he would get the hint. "Man, I can't drive home like this!" Bam whined, and the older man couldn't figure out if he was playing along or didn't catch his hint. "You can sleep in my hotel room, c'mon." He said, pulling a still whining Bam onto his feet. He hugged Janeane, saying their goodbyes, before she slipped the lipstick she'd been hiding in her pocket into his palm and winking, as she stepped away from him to hug Bam, whispering a chuckled "have fun" into his ear.

Johnny guided him to the door with a hand on his back, trying to hurry them along to the hotel. He hailed a cab, both of them sitting in the back seat, his hand resting on Bam's thigh as he whispered into his ear. "You have no idea what you're doing to me, darling." The low growl of his voice made the younger man shiver, blood rushing. "Tell me then." He kept his smug demeanor even though his breathing was uneven and he could feel blood rushing to his crotch. "I think pretty girls like you ought to be fucked real nice." Johnny let his accent slip, knowing it tends to have a positive effect when he's trying to get into someone's pants. Bam almost moaned at the words, surprising himself by being so turned on from being called such a feminine pet name. "You like it when I call you pretty, huh princess?"

Just as those words left his dirty, albeit gorgeous, mouth, the cab stopped and Bam scrambled out of the car, too embarrassed of his own reaction to let Johnny see it. The older man paid the driver and walked into the hotel as Bam trailed behind him. As they walked into the elevator, he felt himself being pushed against the side of it by the taller man. He leant down to whisper in his ear once again. "Don't think I didn't see you blushin' when I called you princess." He stood up straight as the elevator door opened, walking out of it and toward his room as if he didn't just cause all of Bam's blood to leave his brain and go to his dick.

Johnny enjoyed watching the usually coordinated pro skateboarder trip over his feet to get into his room as quickly as humanly possible. He slammed the door behind him before walking over to Bam who was awkwardly standing in the middle of the room, unsure of what to do. "What is it, dalin', cat got your tongue?" He loomed over him, his tone mocking, moving a piece of hair from the boy's eyes before kissing him suddenly, making him whimper and melt into the kiss. Knoxville led the kiss, one of his hands in Bam's hair and the other on his hip as the other man clutched desperately at the hem of his shirt.

Pulling away from the kiss, the older man looked down at Bam with lustfilled eyes, his lips forming an evil smirk. "Do you want to be good for me, Bam Bam?" He watched him nod frantically, his usual cockiness gone. "Then be a good girl and get on your knees for me" Johnny sat down on the bed, watching Bam fall to his knees in front of him, eyes never leaving his. He pulled the lipstick Janeane gave him out of his pocket, uncapping it and admiring the color, a deep burgundy. He took Bam's chin in his hand, tilting it up so he could get the perfect angle, the younger man opening his mouth slightly to make the application easier. "Don't you look absolutely delicious." He swiped a finger over the kneeling man's bottom lip before putting the lipstick away.

"Would be a shame to ruin such pretty makeup, wouldn't it?" Bam only nodded in response, eyes glazed over with lust, not registering that the question was rhetorical. Knoxville loved watching him nod brainlessly to his words, knowing that he could get him to agree to anything his heart desired at this point. He unbuckled his belt, those beautiful blue eyes following his every move as he pulled his dick out. "So you gotta be really careful not to make a mess, princess."

Bam opened his mouth more, letting the older man push his dick into his mouth, leaving a burgundy stain over the entire length of it. Without warning, he started to thrust, hard and fast, making the younger man choke and try to push himself off but Knoxville's hand kept his head down, so he opted for digging his short black nails into his thighs. When he was sufficiently satisfied with the smudged lipstick and the stains that resembled ink covering Bam's face, he pulled him off by his hair, finally letting him breathe again. "My pretty girl." He mumbled as he pulled Bam onto the bed with him.

He pulled the skateboarder into another kiss, this time grabbing his dick through his pants, making him gasp and giving Johnny full access to his mouth. "You really are a girl, huh?" Bam blushed a color that almost matched his lipstick at the older man's cruel words, though he knew he was right. "Let me take care of you, princess." Bam moaned into his mouth, unbuttoning his own jeans and pushing them down to give Knoxville more access. He pushed his hand into his pants, collecting the precum on his fingers. "You're so wet for me." His voice rumbled against Bam's earlobe as the older man's hand traveled lower, circling his entrance before pushing a finger in, the precum being enough to slip it in easily.

Bam's moans filled the room as Knoxville fucked him with his fingers, slowly picking up the pace and filling him up more, until he felt he was ready. He flipped them so the younger man was under him, one leg thrown over his shoulder as he lined himself up, slowly sinking into his costar, moaning in unison. "So tight for me, feel so good, princess." They both lost themselves in the feeling, Bam's nails raking over Knoxville's back, as the older man thrust into him at an unforgiving pace.

The drag of Johnny's dick inside him made the younger man feel like he was on fire, his dick feeling like it was going to burst as soon as someone touches it. Johnny seemed to sense his thoughts, his hand coming down to his dick. He jerked him off with two fingers, furthering his humiliation as he came in seconds, making the older man laugh down at him as he continued to chase his high. "Yeah, that's my good girl, feels so fucking good" He kept rambling as he got closer to his climax, pulling out of Bam to cum on his face and chest.

They both collapsed on the bed, falling asleep in a mess of their fluids instantly, tangled together and half naked, with makeup on. If anyone had found them in the morning like that, it would've been all over the tabloids, but like this, it was only in Big Brother, because Knoxville couldn't resist calling Tremaine in the morning to tell him what state he had woken up in. Bam woke up, demanding that Johnny help him clean himself up and call room service.

"You really are a princess."

#got too into the janeane part whoops #johnny knoxville #bam margera #bam margera x johnny knoxville #johnny knoxville x bam margera #jackass #jackass fanfic #jackass fic #jackass smut #mtv jackass

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saskiavalentineapologist · 8 months ago

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sketch time

you will sit down. you will look at my horrible little women. And You Will Appreciate Them

no this is NOT going under a cut you will see the blood sweat and tears i put into belialah's demon form and you will appreciate it, me, and saskia's off the charts world class monsterfucker status

we got saskia. we're familiar with saskia--or at least you should be. go look at the art by korppipoika and give them so many notes--this post will wait. and while you're out, look at the post about the matriarchs too. and if you're not up to date on saskia and belialah, here's another one for your list. i'll be here when you get back.

up to date? excited? horny? me too!!

so we got those two. in order for the images: saskia (recent), belialah (first draft, still happy with this and haven't been able to capture this vision since)

we got their dynamic:

saskia being a bitch and belialah being, despite everything, head over heels. still can't quite nail belialah's human face, but we're learning

...it took me a long time to nail down belialah's demon form. it went through a lot of drafts---many of which i am not sharing. this one is the oldest one i'm willing to share:

i believe this is draft 3? patch notes from earlier drafts: 4 fingers instead of three, took out "humanoid" eyes, added floaty halo bits. other than that, this is what it's mostly stayed true to. chase gave me an inspo and i remixed it and made it worse because i love body horror. so we have this! extra joint between the wrist and elbow, loads and loads of eyes, sharp teeth (yum!), wings, and a broken halo plus the big horn. love her. she has spider legs below her waist--she has "skirts" that are made from her skin that she usually wears (has?) over them.

made some eensy sketches for ideas:

i tinkered on size, proportion, posture, etc. it's vague, but not exact for either of them. i want a bigger height difference and this is for me first and foremost

i settled on this body type for saskia:

no nipples so she's not naked :) this is for anatomy reference, tumblr. ANATOMY. be so nice to me ;-;

ignore the stuff at the edges, this is part of a larger project idk if i'll finish where i look at all the matriarchs and their body types. saskia is the most...well, besides ethalind, the most hourglass shape. this is the most recent drawing of her i have besides the one at the very end, this is the one i would say is most canon. hence why it is included--the last one i have doesn't quite hit right for me. still working on consistency.

as i improved my art, i wanted to take another stab at belialah. which meant figuring out her lower half.

i did these ones reeaaally recently. i looked at so many things for inspo: crabs, spiders, human pelvises, centaur speculative biology, drider speculative biology, an introspective look at how much of a monsterfucker i am, etc. until i found something i was happy with. these are within the last few days. the lil sketches at the far bottom right of the first page are what i settled on. after that, i tinkered with how she looks with skirts vs no skirts---ignore the sword, it's no longer accurate to what it actually looks like, but that's endgame shit and no spoilers :)

i'm really happy with how she's turned out and i think she's kickass and awesome and i can't wait to beat her and saskia into the ground.

and then we have:

team gaslight gatekeep girlboss :)

i drew this last night!! really happy with how my art is coming along. i hesitated on whether to draw the skirts, because i think the spider legs are so fucking cool and i know logically the skirts are there but tbh its funner drawing the spider legs than the skirts :(

i want to make it very clear: belialah is submissive in the way a guard dog is submissive, to quote a post i once tagged as gilt and lost. belialah is loyal, devoted, willing to protect--but will wait for an order before acting

btw, to make something else clear: saskia? saw the demon form first. is more attracted to the demon form than the human form. is far more willing to smash with belialah in demon form. i love my weirdest little freak of a woman <3

ok that's all bye

#roselyn talks #roselyn's art #love and war #saskia tag #belialah tag #the empress and her shadow #please come talk to me about the worst women in the world i love them so #body horror #too many eyes #eyes cw #idk what to tag #sorry i forgot these initially i hope i got them in time :<

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kelpie-writes · 3 months ago

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Hello new moot! What was your main inspo for Westwood? Or the main inspo for your various OCs?

Hiiii!! It's a mildly embarrassing answer LMAO, I started working on Violet specifically in about 2018 when I first got into some online roleplay forums! She was the foundation of the entire universe being built and none of it would have happened without her. But... she was originally built off a certain.... wizard school novel with an author who has since outed herself as a horrible person. (Note: I don't support her anymore!)

A lot of the story origins in recent plans stemmed from I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston which I read pretty shortly after it came out! I liked the idea of girl goes missing and MC is tasked w/ finding her. Since I felt my original romance plot for Westwood had been lacking anyway, I decided to build upon it in a way I found interesting and fit my own plot beats I already had. It was mostly just the Gone Girl of it all in my opinion that led to me to it!

For my actual worldbuilding of Westwood I had this kind of idea that was a mash up of a lot of my favorite sci-fi shows/movies/books. My main inspiration is definitely Cowboy Bebop in regards to space travel, as well as humanity conquering the galaxy. I also had a lot of inspiration from various other sci-fi novels on just... so many things. Some of which were read too long ago and have been too ingrained for me to remember the name.

Ideas like body modifications were inspired by it being such a commonly used trope, but a few big inspirations are Cyberpunk Edgerunners (I'm too broke for actual video games) and some of the body mods touched on in the Scythe series by Neal Schusterman.

A lot of my aesthetics and themes also tie into my deep love for punk and metalhead counterculture. I can't write a story without it being anti-capitalist or anti police state in some way, and this one has a lot of that.

I could def keep talking about this but you're free to also send me a DM if you desire any more word vomit mootie <3

#kelpie rambles #westwood #violet carter #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing #ask box blues

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baconcolacan · 2 years ago

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@letmeaskdanielaquestion I hope you dont mind but I’m posting this because its impossible for me to answer fully in the replies. And I count this as another ask so just in case someone else has something similar to ask they can look to this one :] Also thank you again for the previous kind words!

And, hrm…about writing, yes I did write a lot before regimen, but its far FAR from being any good. Thankfully most of my early works have never seen the light of day (because they’re in a now dead and deleted fb group) and the ones that did never got off the ground and is lost in ff.net. I was a horrible, horrible, little goblin of a writer and a total weeb. If you cant imagine in, just know that I used stuff like “Kya~!” in the writing……..yeah, I’m choking from embarrassment how did you know?

I also understand the perfectionism bit btw. I’m diagnosed with OCD, and my brand of OCD makes me obsessed with perfection among other things, to the point where I risk bodily harm to achieve it. It took me years of therapy and medication to overcome it, so I understand giving up when you feel something isnt up to your standards. The best advice I can give is this:

When writing, your first draft is just that, your first draft, it doesnt matter if there are grammatical errors and wonky dialogue, its there for you to have fun with and go wild on, word vomiting whatever you feel is the best next sentence. Personally, it feels cathartic to put down all my thoughts on the paper instead of letting them fester in my head, at least its out and not bugging me from within my own mind. I dont sweat the details of my first draft, I just need the words out of my head and physically there so it doesnt bother me as much. Trust me, ideas love to nip and yap at any creative’s heels until they make them real, only then will you have your peace and quiet.

And if you want more order? Before your first draft, make a skeleton of your story, put down the events that happen in each chapter in bullet points. I assume you’ve read chapter 1 of Regimen already so I’ll give my chapter skeleton as an example:

Regimen: Act 1 Outlines

Ch1 - Escape

* Pick up from Armistice. Tom is stumbling through the woods trying to get back to base

* Introduce some unit mates and their relationships with Tom

* Tom hides the fact that the General is dead + his encounter with Tord

* Peace treaty is aired. Things go horribly wrong (Tord is a bastard snake here, remember that Neil)

* Tom announces his intention to escape Norway. The others follow.

* Add context to the world and the state of Norway at the moment, have Tom reflect on his relationship with Tord compared to others. (Hes wrong btw, he ***I erased this next part because the note spoils something***)

* The escape ends in tragedy. Most of the unit is destroyed.

And for inspo? I always suggest different media: books, shows, movies etc etc. Analyze them, see how the plot flows, what works and what doesn’t, how does the story progress? Do they use flashbacks? How often? Exposition? How much? etc etc.

But ah, take my advice with a grain of salt. I’m a professional visual artist, I’m just a hobbyist when it comes to writing ^^;

#asks #letmeaskdanielaquestion #regimen ao3 #Its late here now so I’m going to bed #night you guys~#long post #kinda #I jabber a bit lol

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hiccanna-tidbits · 2 years ago

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@jackunzel-time

Jackunzel Month Week 4 - Fairy Tales Beauty and the Beast

***

AKAJSIFEBPYBGU NOT ME PLANNING A JACKUNZEL ONE SHOT FOR JACKUNZEL MONTH LAST YEAR AND NOT GETTING AROUND TO WRITING IT UNTIL THE END OF JACKUNZEL MONTH THIS YEAR OMG

Anyways, it’s here!!! I finally did it, it’s here!!! I was gonna write two other little drabble things for fairy tale week, but honestly?? *Collapses*

I MEAN I’LL DO THEM I PROMISE I’LL DO THEM but ain’t no way they’re getting done on time XD

So basically the story is that I saw this post last year and just. Immediately came up with a Jackunzel Beauty and the Beast-type AU to go with it in my head. At first I was like “UGH great another fanfic idea I’ll never get around to writing” and then I was like “BUT WAIT!!! Jackunzel month!!! I’ll write it then!!!” and then I just. Didn’t. XD

But then THIS year I was like “ENOUGH DILLYDALLYING BITCH YOU GONNA DO THIS” and then I guess I actually did??? Took like a week of late-night writing sessions and intensive spooky ambiance, but IT GOT DONE.

So without further ado, enjoy this bout of literally-star-crossed celestial angst! I also took a lot of inspo from the Corrupted Nightmare Jack AU here, as well as the beast from Over the Garden Wall. Kind of going for what Jack could have become if he really did join up with Pitch, even if he doesn’t exactly here. Hopefully the design I used for him is sufficiently spooky!! And tragic!! :’)

Might go without saying, but CW for a little body horror here. It’s beauty and the beast, tho so I feel like that comes with the genre XD

Fic under the cut! As always, moodboard pic credits available upon request!

***

The Sunbringer and the Shadowkeeper

The Sunbringer shivered as she made her way through the murky forest.

It felt like she’d been walking for hours and made it nowhere. The woods never changed—always the same crooked, barren tree silhouettes, their topmost branches forming jagged windows into a vast and endless night sky. Peat and old leaves squished and crunched underfoot, sometimes making noises so pronounced that the Sunbringer could swear someone else was there.

Or something. Watching her.

She quickened her pace, pulling her translucent golden cloak tighter around her shoulders. Some solar warmth still remained among its folds, but it was trickling out day by day.

The periods where the days should be, anyways.

Spring was late that year. The Sunbringer was starting to regret telling the Council of the Skies she would be the one to investigate.

By the equinox, the sun was always released from the Place of Shadows. The Sunbringer caught it without fail, holding it high in the sky as the grass grew and the flowers bloomed and the animals crept from hibernation and started families. But the solstice had come and gone, and there was no sign of the warmth-giver needed for the world to be reborn.

Now, the Sunbringer wandered through an endless winter landscape. Dead and dark and horribly cold, the only sources of light were the faint, faraway stars and the glow from the Sunbringer’s own golden braid. The further she went, the more the air bit into her skin and the winds wailed like a miserable dog. It was like something out of a nightmare.

She hummed a tune to herself, trying to calm frayed nerves. The sound of her own voice was her only companion in this lifeless place.

It was a song her mother had taught her, long, long ago. A healing incantation that could seal any wound, no matter how brutal. If rumor be believed, it could even raise the dead.

Now, the Sunbringer only hoped to dispel her own fear.

Surprisingly, the Sunbringer’s mother was not some celestial goddess, a queen of the clouds who passed her divinity on to her daughter. No, the Sunbringer had been human once, chosen for this job many, many millennia ago.

She couldn’t remember much of her human life. There were bits and pieces, scattered through her mind like tiny wildflowers in an alpine meadow.

She’d been from a small village. It was a simple life—one where she was expected to become a seamstress or a milkmaid or a farmhand girl or a grocer’s assistant or any number of other mundane things. She collected berries and herbs in the woods. She knew which mushrooms were the poisonous ones, and which ones tasted delicious cooked with butter and sage. She helped where she could—the fall harvest and the sheep herding and the chicken feeding. Her mother, who she faintly recalled being a curvy, dark-haired woman, doted on her day and night, but at the price of smothering her relentlessly. The Sunbringer had to fight to do anything on her own.

She had to fight not to have her hand held.

There was a boy, too. Brown-haired, twiggy, a constant bounce in his step. Always running through the woods and climbing trees in the summer and entertaining the younger children with goofy antics on long, frigid winter nights. He’d been her best friend. She was pretty sure, anyways.

She remembered he died young, although the exact way wasn’t clear. It brought her a strange sort of comfort, knowing that she never missed out on growing up and growing old with the brown-haired boy.

Sometimes she snatched at the faint recollections, trying to pull on the threads to see what else she could find. Her Sunbringer duties always seemed to call before she got far.

After all, there was sunshine to spread and plants to grow and cats to keep warm in little yellow squares on kitchen floors. The world was a delicate, precious balance of life and death, and it would crumble within days if she ever shirked her responsibilities.

And now more than ever, she had more pressing matters. She suspected she knew what happened to the sun—and if she was right, there was no time to be wasted.

The Council of the Skies had told many a tale of the Shadowkeeper. A creature always just beyond the shadows, he was more the dread of the darkness or the nervous tingles you got on the back of your neck than a tangible being. Those who met him said they never got a clear look, his form obscured by black tendrils and his head only a silhouette with sharp antlers and pointed teeth. When you came upon him, you felt all the bleakness and biting cold of the dead of winter wash over you.

He kept the sun swept up in his dark, swirling form all throughout the frostiest months, weakening it almost too much for the world to bear. In spring he released it, at last letting warmth reclaim the sky.

This year, the Shadowkeeper must have kept his grip on the sun, greedily sucking light into his cold body like a tick drinking blood. Hogging the sun for 3 months was no longer enough for him, it seemed.

Light embedded into the Sunbringer’s skin flickered, as it always did when she grew nervous. Long had she suspected she may have to battle the winter’s terrifying guardian, but she never dreamed it would be over something as immense as him wanting to keep the sun for his own.

Sometimes she resented being chosen for this life. It was a draining existence, guarding the heat that kept the world alive when the smallest chain reaction could leave everything destroyed.

The Sunbringer had never met the Shadowkeeper, but she believed the stories. The forest he called home was icy and frightful, and she didn’t imagine he was any better.

A heavy fog hung in the air, sticking to her skin in chilly droplets. She wondered, not for the first time, what would happen if she were to die again.

Was there any way the Council of the Skies could bring her back, use their powers to form her out of sunlight again? Or would they simply move on, letting her fade into legend as they chose a new Sunbringer?

The thought made her feel unbearably lonely—a nearly invisible wisp of a soul that could dissolve into the mist at any moment, leaving few behind who would care she was gone. The world would mourn the role she played, sure—mourn the position that needed to be filled. But they wouldn’t mourn her.

She couldn’t say how long she walked before the fog began to clear. The forest floor came into sight at some point, a carpet of brown leaves frosted at the edges.

They were cold against her bare feet. She couldn’t fully explain why, but the prickles they sent through her didn’t bother her.

Perhaps, she thought, she was so used to the heat of her own skin that a new sensation was welcomed, even if it was the antithesis of everything she was meant to stand for.

When the wisps of fog were thin enough to see the trees she stopped, eyes widening. The branches were covered in white snow, glimmering softly in the starlight.

It was a strange kind of beautiful. An unexpected piece of something pure and lovely in a world so desolate.

She couldn’t explain why, but the sight of it made her sad. Her heart felt suddenly hollow, like there was something just out of reach that belonged there.

Something to do with this tiny speck of beauty in a dead, frozen world.

The Sunbringer pushed the melancholia aside. She had a job to do—one where she simply did not have time to wonder about why she was at such a puzzling loss here.

She walked on. The leaves became sprinkled with snow—first flakes, then clumps, then a sprawling carpet. She found herself relishing the shivers it sent through her feet. Something still strange and novel, but exhilarating nonetheless.

Moonlight glinted off ice, and she saw a frozen river blocking her path. She tested it with a tentative foot, wondering if she had enough of the sun’s power left in her to float if the frozen covering didn’t hold.

The river was sturdy and strong, no trace of spring around to weaken the ice. The Sunbringer placed a foot on the frosty surface and began her crossing.

Toward the middle, the river groaned. The Sunbringer tensed as the realization hit.

There had been no spring to melt the ice until she came along.

She broke into a run, ice cracking and caving behind her. Thank the skies she always seemed to be one step ahead of catastrophe.

She swore there was something dark swirling below her—something always just under her field of vision. She knew if she stopped to get a good look, the river would have her.

Reaching the other side did not bring her the comfort she had hoped.

There was something distinctively eerie about the woods here. The Sunbringer wondered again—more urgently this time—if someone or something was watching her.

There seemed to be shadows everywhere—rippling, licking, always just out of her grasp. She heard them swooshing and whistling like gusts of wind.

But whenever she turned to look, they were gone.

Her feelings were becoming more and more of a riddle. The Sunbringer should have felt fear—crippling, nauseating fear.

Instead, all she felt was a strange longing.

The shadows were her other half, she supposed. You couldn’t truly have light without them. Perhaps that was why they called to her.

But there was something more.

The dark tendrils swirled thicker and thicker between the trees, always on the verge of engulfing her. She stopped.

“Shadowkeeper.” She spoke the word aloud, realizing where she was.

She’d reached the heart of his domain. His lair.

“Is that all you know me as?”

His voice floated in the air like mist, formless and ghostly. The icy breath of winter itself.

The Sunbringer frowned. “What other name is there? I bring the sun, you hold the shadows. That is all we are.”

“It wasn’t always.” The Shadowkeeper laughed, and it didn’t sound nearly as menacing as the Council of the Skies always described.

It was…playful. Bittersweet, almost.

“That doesn’t matter.” The Sunbringer forced her expression to harden. “All there is is now. You’ve kept the sun too long, and I have come to reclaim it. It is time for spring to come.”

“So formal.” The Shadowkeeper chuckled. “How long have you rehearsed that?”

“Long enough.” She frowned, although she couldn’t quite determine which cluster of dark wisps she should frown at. “It’s been weeks!”

“That was the only way I could see you. It’s not like you’d come out here on your own.”

Her frown turned to a look of confusion. “Why would you want to see me? Doesn’t the light hurt you?”

“Not if it’s you.”

All the flickering shadows snaked around the tree trunks and clustered together, twisting like water in a whirlpool. They spun around and around, melting from a trembling pillar into the inky form of…something.

The creature that stood before her loomed over the forest clearing. His body was surrounded by billowing shadows, floating in inky puffs like a cloak of midnight clouds. His head—or what the Sunbringer guessed it to be, anyhow—was narrow and elongated, crown adorned with the silhouettes of sharp, spindly tree branches. They jabbed out in every direction, bringing to mind the head of some strange deer that couldn’t stop growing antlers.

The only bit of color on the beast was his eyes—a pale golden that almost perfectly matched the Sunbringer’s hair. The Sunbringer found herself feeling strange again.

“You really don’t know me?” The voice that came from the beast was soft. Almost timid.

It had to be a trick. Some way for the Shadowkeeper to throw her off-guard.

Did he believe if he attacked her—if he vanquished her light—that he could plunge the world into darkness? It seemed a naïve sentiment from a spirit at least as old as her, if not older. He had to know the Council of the Skies would pick a new Sunbringer.

It was strange, come to think of it. She somehow knew the Shadowkeeper was not some ancient creature who had been around since the dawn of time, nor was he a young spirit only just learning the ebb and flow of the natural world.

To answer the Shadowkeeper’s original question, what the Sunbringer did and did not know was becoming more and more puzzling.

“I know you stole the sun.” Perhaps she should start with what it did make sense for her to know. “And I’m not sure what you want with me, but I know you need to give it back. I can’t let you make the world go dark.”

“Ask me by name, and it’s yours.”

It was an odd request, but the Sunbringer saw no reason to refuse.

“Shadowkeeper, I implore you to—”

“That’s not my name.”

The Sunbringer scowled. “Well, if that isn’t your name, then I don’t know what it is!”

“I think you do.”

The shadows swirled around their keeper, circling a few times before dissolving like smoke. Gradually his form came into view, lit only by the faintest starlight.

The Shadowkeeper—the beast—was a frightening thing. His limbs were long and grotesque, spindly and stiff like the barren trees surrounding him. His skin was rough and cracked, made almost entirely of bark. His hands ended in long, pointed branchlets, curved and sharpened into claws.

The branches on the Shadowkeeper’s head looked even more unnerving in the light. They snaked all the way down his back, all honed like a young stag’s antlers. It hardly helped that his face was still difficult to see, save for those eerie yellow eyes.

Her eyes trailed across his body, and she started. There was something pale under the bark, barely visible behind thickly-woven black tendrils.

Human skin, slowly being suffocated by wood. Before long, it would all be buried too deep for anyone to see.

The Shadowkeeper was once an ordinary person. Like her.

“Does it hurt?” Her voice came out in a strangled whisper.

The Shadowkeeper glanced down, as if just noticing the bark that was choking out the softer flesh underneath. He chuckled.

“To be honest, I’ve stopped noticing. Does it hurt when you hold the sun?”

Despite herself, the Sunbringer laughed too. “I guess…I’ve stopped noticing, too.”

The Shadowkeeper took a pace toward her. The Sunbringer surprised herself when she felt no desire to back away.

Something on the Shadowkeeper’s back caught her eye, and she cried out. Protrusions she had thought were just more branches were arrows.

She knitted her brow, suddenly concerned. “People hunt you? In your own forest?”

The Shadowkeeper snorted. “Maybe they think they can get rid of winter that way. I’m usually too quick for them to land a good blow, but not always.”

“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to live in fear.”

The Shadowkeeper shrugged, the bark of his shoulders creaking. “Eh. What can you do? I pretend it’s an intentional fashion choice.”

The Sunbringer found herself laughing again.

She gave him a thoughtful look, wondering if she’d been wrong. “You…don’t want to hurt me, do you?”

“No.” The Shadowkeeper looked at her with such a sorrow that it took her aback. “Who do you think helped you across the stream? Who do you think made sure the places you stepped were always frozen?”

“That was you?”

Her eyes widened, picturing the dark swirls under the ice and not quite believing they were something benevolent. “You were really trying to help?”

“Always.”

His voice was quick and certain, and she was left baffled once again. “But why?”

He takes a breath before answering.

“Because we were friends once, Rapunzel. A long time ago.”

Rapunzel…

The Sunbringer almost fell back onto the snow.

Memories so vague before came stampeding back at full force. She remembered everything—the bedroom her mother locked her in, a fluffy bob of brown hair, weaving flower crowns for her best friend’s sister, dancing around the maypole at summer festivals, the ice pond that had drowned her best friend.

Her best friend.

“Jack.”

She breathed out his name in a ragged sob. For a moment she stood with her head spinning, wondering despondently how she could have ever forgotten Jackson Overland.

“Took you long enough, Zellie.”

She ran to him, throwing her arms around rough skin and burying her face in his chest.

Bark groaned as his arms wove around her, pulling her closer. She felt wooden tendrils twist across the surface of her gown, entwining them together until they could have been one being.

Rapunzel thought back to the cramped room in her human home—the one her mother made her prison. With Jack’s branches surrounding her, she found it strange she didn’t feel trapped.

On the contrary, she felt safe. She felt loved.

“I’m so sorry,” she choked, face wet with tears. “I’m sorry I—I don’t know how I…”

“It’s all right.” He murmured into her hair, voice soft. “For…a long time, I didn’t remember you either. Then one spring, I looked up, and saw you floating through the sky like this…miracle of nature, and…” His voice broke. “It was like you never left my mind.”

She looked up and met his eyes, getting a good look at his face for the first time.

It wasn’t quite what she remembered. Framed by spikes of inky black instead of chocolate brown. Stretched, slightly distorted. All ghostly skin and sharp angles. Like the lengthened shadows at the end of the day. Like something in the half-light.

She reached out a hand and cupped his cheek. It was so frigid her hand stung.

She didn’t let go.

He leaned into her palm, amber eyes slipping shut. Long, sharp fingers slithered into view, his clawed hand coming to rest gently over hers.

The frightful tales of the Council of the Skies seemed laughable now. She couldn’t be scared of Jack, not when she knew how bright and good and kind he had once been.

How much he still was.

It seemed none of that tenderness ever left, monstrous form or not. He was still her Jack, even after everything.

“I missed you,” she whispered. “I felt so hollow. I didn’t even realize it, but…it always felt like I lost something. Why didn’t you ever come find me?”

“I can’t—I can’t leave this place.” He blinked down at her with wet golden eyes. “I’m not strong enough to come out of the shadows. Going out and finding you would be like—like trying to make a blizzard in June.”

“But in the winter?”

“You’re always too far to reach.” He smiled sadly, shaking his head. “I see you, flying through the clouds and glowing bright enough to warm the whole world. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in all the dark crevices—down on the ground, wanting to run to you every chance I get. But the light beats me back every time I try. So…that’s why I had you come to me.”

His hand uncurled from her back, sliding around to form a closed fist in the air between them. As his fingers opened, Rapunzel gasped.

There was the sun, golden and radiant and as mellow as it was on spring mornings. It looked strangely delicate, floating in Jack’s hand in a tiny, flickering orb.

Odd to imagine something that seemed so small and insignificant gave life to all of earth.

“At the end of winter, you always waited for me to release it.” Jack’s voice was suddenly pained. “You floated above me and got ready to catch it, but…you never looked at me. You never saw me.”

She stroked the cold skin of his cheek with her thumb. “I see you now.”

“All according to plan.”

He smirked in a way that made her raise her eyebrows.

“I knew you’d never give me a second thought if things went on like they did. I was this…menacing thing that tossed you your sun sometimes. Always just out of sight enough to make the tales of horror seem true. So one spring, I didn’t toss you your sun. I made you come and get it.”

“And so you did.” She laughed, pressing her forehead into the craggy bark of his chest. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Jack. A forest that gives a girl the scare of her life is no way to treat an old friend.”

“Sorry about that.” He chuckled sheepishly. “Wish I could curate a bit of a warmer welcome. Unfortunately I am, in fact, a guardian of winter and darkness and other related spooky things.”

“Well, I suppose it’s my own fault. I was the one who volunteered to roam the creepiest forest in existence to find you.”

“Also planned on that.” He snickered into her hairline, and she scowled.

“What do you mean?!”

“You always have to bend over backwards pleasing everyone. I remember how you were with your mom.”

Rapunzel huffed. “I like to think I’ve grown a little as a person in the past millennium or two.”

“Maybe, but…you’re still not going to ask someone else to do something you figure you could take care of yourself.”

She sighed. Even after all this time, he still knew her well enough to predict her every move.

“Oh, get out of my head, Jackson Overland.”

“You wish.”

Something nudged her side. She turned her head to see Jack extending his hand to her, sun gleaming in his palm.

“I believe I have something of yours.”

She scrutinized it for a moment. It was strange—the end of her journey was so close and so tangible, and yet…

Rapunzel didn’t want it anymore.

“Take it.” The rough edges of Jack’s fingers nudged her again. “It was selfish of me to keep it so long, anyways. And now I got to see you, so…”

She reached out and closed her fingers around the bright sphere.

Immediately she felt its power course through her, setting every vein in her celestial form ablaze. Warmth rippled beneath her skin, seeping into every crack and crevice that had grown cold. The corners of her vision were flooded with a blinding glow, and it took her a moment to realize it was her.

Suddenly, she was expanding, the sun’s power swirling around her body as she grew and grew and grew. She felt like a supernova—a radiant burst of light on the verge of giving birth to a new galaxy.

Within moments, she was standing as tall as the Shadowbringer. As Jack.

He looked different from up here. His eyes were close enough now that she could see the playful shine in them. She could make out the thin curve of his lips and the boxy shape of his ears and the rounded bridge of his nose and eyebrows that always had a rebellious hair or two out of place. Everything about him was so achingly familiar that she wanted to cry.

She glanced down at their hands—still intertwined. Jack never let go after she took the sun.

It might have been her imagination, but his clawed fingers looked a little shorter. A little less pointed.

He laced their fingers together and held on tightly, as though scared she might dissolve at any moment.

Like an afternoon sunbeam when the evening was looming.

Her thumb ghosted over the back of his hand, trying to communicate a silent reassurance.

I’m here. I’m real. I’m not going to leave you again.

She hadn’t meant to disappear in the first place, but it was no matter. It was still a mistake she was not keen on repeating.

Rapunzel looked up, and their eyes met again. She remembered something else.

She remembered how she looked at him when they sat tucked away in the treetops, him telling her stories and her sketching his movements on a tattered paper pad. She remembered watching him do skits by the fireside and splash her in the lake in the summer, and how she felt something so profound that for weeks and months and years she couldn’t put a name to it.

All she could do now was try and speak with her heart. Rapunzel leaned in and pressed her mouth to the Shadowkeeper’s.

Pure energy exploded through her, and all at once she felt so gloriously alive. It was as if she had become the entire sky, unbounded and immeasurable and shining with every color—cerulean blue, peach pink, blinding golden, deep violet, tangerine, fiery red, soft white, ebony black.

Jack’s arms wrapped around her again, pulling her closer. It felt like every moment in the universe—every passing day, every time the sun had risen and set—had been leading up to this.

It was more powerful than all the stars above them combined.

Perhaps that was only her biases talking. Perhaps she only imagined it to be that way, considering she had yearned for this longer than she would ever know.

It was like coming home to a hearth and a cozy bed after a long, long journey. One that had taken her much farther than she ever wished to go.

And it was right. Something—she couldn’t tell quite what—had been so asymmetrical before.

Now it was perfectly centered.

A deep, warm calm settled through Rapunzel as she pulls away. Jack watched her with soft blue eyes.

Blue eyes.

He’d changed. Eerie amber faded into sparkling ice blue. Inky back hair was now tinged with a beautiful, crystalline white, like fresh snow dusting winter treetops. Bark begun to peel off his skin, revealing more and more of the boy Rapunzel remembered.

He smirked in a way that made her feel lighter than she had in perhaps a century. She laughed, resting her hands on his cheeks and pressing their foreheads together.

“I love you.”

It was the first time she had truly put it into words, but she was certain some part of her had always known.

She knew when they were children, chasing each other through the woods and jumping in leaf piles and sledding down steep hills in the winter. She knew when the boys and girls at school began to kiss and hold hands, and she found her eyes always straying to Jack, wondering if his lips tasted like peppermint hot chocolate and stories and mischief. She knew when she heard he’d drowned in icewater, and it felt like half of herself had suffocated right down there with him. And she knew for all the centuries she thought she forgot about him, even if it was buried deep inside.

She felt wetness against her face, and realized he was crying.

He let out a shaky, relieved laugh. “I love you, too.”

Sharp cracks and snaps rang out as more bark peeled off. The body beneath Rapunzel’s fingers grew softer.

More like the one she had always yearned to hold, all those years ago.

And suddenly Rapunzel knew. She knew exactly what she had to do to finish this.

She knew what she had to do to fully pull Jack from the dark shell—the prison—that had grown around him, fueled by all those centuries of being feared and alone.

One of her hands strayed from his face, grabbing a tendril of blonde hair and wrapping it around a spindly, twiglike wrist. His long fingers curled over hers, shaking nervously.

Even so, Jack made no move to pull away. He must have trusted her fully.

She began to sing.

Rapunzel’s mother may have been an eccentric woman, strange at the best of times and terrifying at the worst. She may have had some unusual ideas about what it was to “love” your daughter, too.

But she had been right about one thing: The incantation she taught Rapunzel could heal anything.

Sunlight slipped down blonde hair, radiating soft gold as it went. The glow trickled across Jack like honey, and Rapunzel could only hope the heat didn’t hurt.

It appeared not to. Jack’s eyes slid shut, contented. His hand went limp in hers.

The hand that, to her amazement, was starting to feel less and less like gnarled twigs and more and more like skin.

The glow faded. Blue eyes opened under a mop of pale hair, white as afternoon clouds. Rapunzel felt fingers lace between hers, holding tightly.

They were a perfect fit.

The hand he lifted to cup the back of her neck was fully human. She smiled into his mouth and kissed him again.

Down on earth, folk across every land and every sea would later say that spring began with the most spectacular sunrise any of them had ever seen.

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